Opinion Prone

Goodbye, Blogger -- Hello, WordPress!

2009-06-21T19:01:00.003-04:00

That's right. Blogger was nice for a while. It's integration into Google makes it handy for a lot of things, but it's still severely lacking in customization features and I figure it's the sooner the better for WordPress because the longer I stay here, the more posts I'd have to straighten out when I do inevitably move to WordPress. :P Besides, it's just so much nicer to host your own sites. Much more dependable!

So yes. Opinion Prone has moved over here!

Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds! (Unless you're on my Feedburner feed, in which case, you should have already swapped over.)

For the sake of not breaking anyone's links, I'll still keep all my old posts here, but all new content shall be over at the new site. I hope you continue reading~. :3

(PS. There is no "rest of this entry." That is just one of many roundabout hacks I had to install onto this Blogger because there's no native feature for cuts.)

Nostalgia and Timelessness

2009-06-18T18:04:00.007-04:00

So I started rewatching Gundam Wing dub last night. It's a special series for me since, like many others, it was my catapult into the Gundam franchise on the whole. It was one of my first major fandoms, and I'd seen it in its entirety two or three times back in glory days of Toonami, but it's been a good seven or eight years or so since I'd seen it last (and it feels much longer than that). Like some things I've revisited from the past, I was half-expecting it to be terrible, and to some extent, it was. The characters are hilariously unobservant and brash in ways that don't even begin to make sense. The dubbing also offers some choice lines in amazingly awkward voices. There are many logic and realism gaps. I laughed a lot.

And yet, even with all the lulz, it's still so epic when it counts. I'm still enjoying this way too much. Treize takes over the world in seven episodes in one of the most awesome coup de'tats ever. There are so many political things I'm noticing and understanding now that I didn't even notice the first time around, and it's just a lot fun to revisit something while simultaneously gaining a whole new experience. Nostalgia and sentimentality is undoubtedly what's allowing me to forgive all of the more blatant flaws -- I'd never accept such huge logic and realism gaps in a recent show, as evidenced by my dislike of Gundam 00, but for Wing, it's all right.

But I never feel as if the nostalgia factor blinds me. Forgiving the flaws isn't the same as denying they're there, and besides, most good things have their flaws. It's just your perspective that determines whether the good outweighs the bad, or if the bad outweighs the good. I'm only seven episodes into the rewatch, but right now, I honestly still think this is a great show. Wing's storyline is strong and clear, and has many interesting concepts. Its characters are varied and relatively engaging. I still think the music is amazing. I still think the mecha designs in this series are some of the best in the franchise. These are the things that won't change with time, no matter how many years pass. Good stories are good stories. Good art is good art.

The art and animation are a bit aged now, yes, but they still suit the story. That compatibility is much more important than the fact that it's not as shiny by today's standards. Of course it isn't as shiny; Gundam Wing debuted fourteen years ago. But that doesn't matter, just like it doesn't matter that Nosferatu is a black and white, silent, German film. The medium still fits the story, and the story is still good. In that sense, I think that most productions, whether movies or television shows or anime or manga, can be considered "timeless." It doesn't matter when it was made; if it had a good story and the medium suited it, then it can remain accessible to any subsequent generation.

But then, what about the things that don't hold up? Does that imply that they were never good stories in the first place, if the stories aren't as good now as supposedly used to be?

Actually, I can't think of many examples of (once) good stories that don't hold up against the test of time. Most of the stories I loved as a kid I either still love now or still appreciate as something aimed towards kids. Some stories with overt social or political commentary or controversy might be more popular in one century than another, but if there's enough story to go along with the opinion, I don't think it'd have trouble remaining accessible. Just look at The Sound of Music or the Watchmen comic or books like Number the Stars.

Stories grounded in a certain time period also aren't at a particular disadvantage either. As long as people have an understanding of the surrounding history and perspective, it isn't really a problem. Shakespeare remains timeless despite the fact that his plays are centuries old and in a dialect that died somewhere along the way. The language might turn some people off, but the core of the quality of the stories are unaffected by neither time nor anything else. Can the stories still appeal to people if the language was updated to something more modern? Probably. It's the same as when a popular novel is translated into several different languages, isn't it? The story is the same. The story is still good. Everything else is secondary.

It's kind of interesting to note also that there are a lot more things that I like more the second or third time around than things that I dislike the second or third time around. Second and third experiences allow for better understanding of the story involved, and understanding is essential to many experiences.

Many of the best anime and manga I've encountered are neither socially or politically charged or grounded in a specific time period, which will probably help them a lot. Some of them depend heavily on cultural quirks and current fandom (Ouran High School Host Club), and some of them are concentrated on ideas in technology that may well change in the future (Planetes, Ghost in the Shell), but as long as the people in the year 2500 take the time to understand where these stories are coming from, they can enjoy them just as we have. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up still liking Gundam Wing a lot this time around, and if that's the case, I don't think that will change in another decade or two, or three, or four. Similarly, I probably still won't like Gundam 00 in however many years.

Final conclusion? All good stories are timeless.

Review: Gundam 00 (second season)

2009-06-17T21:33:00.004-04:00

Three months after this series finished, and I've finally finished the review for it. Finally.

I had such a hard time writing this. It's hard to find a reasonable voice when all you can remember is everything that sucked. It isn't an objectivity issue since you obviously can't be objective writing something that's completely opinion, but it's still hard to fashion your opinion in a way that doesn't make you seem like some fanraging idiot. After all, reviews are also supposed to be subtly persuasive, and it's hard to be persuasive if you sound offended or butthurt about how terrible something is. It's the same reason people tend to take the opinions of fanboys with a grain of salt. Don't be overzealous. Write intelligently. Well, I tried.

Honestly, when this series first ended, I wanted to write a long, raging rant about how much I hated the ending and how terribly disappointing the entire thing was on a variety of different levels. But then I put it off and eventually didn't feel like it anymore. I got the urge again as I was writing the review, and subsequently, the review spiraled into a bunch of sarcastic remarks. Some of them got edited out. Some of them didn't. I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it.

I do this for fun! This is fun, see? Fun!

On Learning Japanese & My Japanese Coach for DS

2009-06-13T18:44:00.001-04:00

I wonder if anyone's actually polled the percentage of otaku that have at some point tried to learn Japanese. I wonder what a follow-up of such a poll would reveal about the percentage that actually attain some level of fluency. Anyone who watches subs on a regular or even semi-regular basis will be able to pick up a wide variety of everyday phrases and a decent slice of vocabulary. The observant ones might even be able to pick up some simple sentence structuring, verbs, and grammar. It's a pretty awesome thing when you first realize that, hey, you know a bit of another language.

Undoubtedly, that's why a lot of younger fans will insert bits and pieces of what they know into their speech or text online. It's like a secret language, something esoteric to share between friends, and everybody likes thinking they're special. Like Pig Latin though, the language is actually not so secret, or at the very least, the popular tidbits of the language that young fans like to parrot are not so secret, and they tend to annoy everybody over a certain age. Ostracized and mocked by the rest of the community, the young fans reach a point where they stop tacking -chan and -kun after all their friends' names. There is a brief "maturing" period. And then they decide that they're going to knuckle down and learn Japanese... for real this time.

I imagine that most people will take a few shots at memorizing their kana and then give up. They'll retain all the romaji vocabulary and phrases they know, and maybe they'll still use it now and again in a mocking or less-than-serious manner, but that's about it. Some will succeed in memorizing their kana and master some grammar, but kanji stops them dead in their tracks. The last handful plow right on through, kick the JLPT's ass, and then run off to Japan to teach English because that's your stereotypical otaku dream. I wonder, are there any fans that listen to the language on a regular basis, but who have never had any interest whatsoever in learning it? Or is it just innate to want to understand something you find yourself so submerged in? The latter makes sense to me, but it'd be interesting to hear the answers to the contrary.

Being Chinese, I've always felt this persistent guilt for wanting to learn Japanese more than I wanted to re-learn Mandarin and Cantonese since I pretty much lost my fluency in both by the time I was eight. That guilt, for the most part, has kept me from seriously pursuing Japanese fluency. Now, it seems that I have a good chance of being able to go to Japan for two weeks in December as part of a college trip. I guess that's as good an excuse as any to get a move on, right?

So I got my hands on My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS because it was easy and convenient. It's far from the most sophisticated learning device in the world, but hey, I still don't know how serious I want to be about this. The game opens with a placement test, which aims to start you off in the right chapter based on your existing knowledge. I found that to be kind of iffy though. Since all the questions are multiple choice, lucky guesses will end up opting you out of lessons you might need. Yeah, I know a bunch of pronouns and the colors, but I didn't know any of the days of the week and I got out of that chapter with some lucky guesses. Not cool. I need to learn this stuff, man. (Still, you can go back and do the skipped lessons, so it's not a huge deal.)

Playing through it, the set-up of the game leaves a lot to be desired. Each lesson is fairly short and will either cover one new concept, like months, days of the week, colors, or a certain verb, or two sets of kana (I'm not that far in the game yet, but undoubtedly, later chapters will expand to include sets of five to ten kanji per lesson). The game won't let you progress to the next lesson until you've "mastered" all the new vocabulary or kana introduced in that lesson. You gain mastery points by playing through games. It sounds decent enough, but I found most of the games to be absurdly easy, thus making it way, way too easy to "master" things.

You can unlock new games as you progress through various lessons, but seriously, out of the seven or eight games I have so far, I only really like one of them, and that's the one that gives you a word or kana and makes you write it. It's useful for forcing you to memorize your kana, but it's pretty annoying for writing actual words (in kana) since you have to write each character one at a time. Longish words like げつようび (getsuyoubi, Monday) or じゅいちがつ (juichigatsu, November) really make me wish the kanji lessons would come up faster. The game also isn't all that great at recognizing mistakes in your characters. As long as you have the right number of strokes and the shape is kinda right, it'll count it correct. It bothers me immensely that it doesn't take stroke order into consideration even though it does mention its importance at some point. The other games are okay as far as drilling in meaning associations, but among other things, having to play the whack-a-mole game makes me feel like an idiot.

Currently, I'm just about done "mastering" hiragana, but honestly, I still don't feel very confident in it. Kanji, in all its apparent complication, makes a helluva lot more sense to me because of my Chinese background, but hiragana doesn't seem to follow any discernable pattern as far as I can tell. I mean, き(ki) and さ(sa) are completely different sounds, but their characters are so similar. ら(ra), ろ(ro), and る(ru) make slightly more sense. Kind of, except that れ(re) and り(ri) don't follow. Incidentally, Mandarin has a pronunciation aid system similar to furigana, but I never learned it, only pinying, which is comparable to romaji. My father says that both hiragana and katakana characters are based off kanji words that start with the sound they represent, but that doesn't really help me if I don't know those kanji words.

My Japanese Coach is an okay aid. It's easy enough to pick up on a daily basis, but you have to play back through old lessons pretty frequently to actually memorize things since you can "master" them so quickly. It's just as well though -- after all, you have to work at any language to learn it. No tool is going to just hand the knowledge to you. I might come back and write about the game some more when I've progressed further into it. At present, I don't plan on getting much else in the way of language learning tools because I'm poor and don't have a lot of time anyway. I would love to learn Japanese, but it's still not a real, hardcore serious goal yet. I really think I need to reattain some level of fluency in Chinese before that can happen.

In the meantime, it's back to the hiragana charts!

First Impressions: Tommy Heanvely6's I Kill My Heart

2009-06-05T16:36:00.001-04:00

I Kill My Heart
Tommy Heavenly6's 3rd album
29th April 2009

Tommy heavenly6 is my favorite of Tomoko Kawase's projects, followed by the brilliant green. I'm not all that fond of Tommy february6, though it kind of reminds me a bit of Nana Kitade. Sadly, all of Tomoko's projects were recently dropped by Sony, along with a few other artists like Sowelu. Doesn't make any sense to me considering the popularity of her numerous anime tie-ins ("Pray" for Gintama, "Paper Moon" for SOUL EATER, "Unlimited Sky" for Gundam 00), but whatever... business is business? Sowelu just signed with Avex, but no word on Tomoko yet as far as I know. I don't really doubt that she has a lot of options though. Regardless, this album was the latest and last released by Sony in late April. I only just got my hands on it, but here we go~.

TRACK 01: Wait For Me There (YouTube it)
Distorted, kinda dark sorta intro. Vocals start plainly, but it picks up nicely -- has a good beat. Some pretty awkward sounding Engrish, but Tomoko's voice is confident and smooth. Sometimes I like to just pretend that she isn't butchering a language she doesn't know that well. The words become less important than the sound and the emotion, and this song has a very relaxed, feel-good mood to be. Did she just say, "Let's have some tea"? Some interesting vocal overlaps in the bridge, though I don't think this is her best example of harmony. Song ends as smoothly and plainly as it starts. All around not a bad go, but not all that interesting either.

TRACK 02: Leaving You
Generic opening. Quiet, contemplative vocal intro. Feels very thoughtful. Percussion picks up nicely, if a bit simply -- really diggin' the melody here. Ohh... not too fond of the sounds in the chorus. The pitch on the high notes feel awkward and almost unintentional. Thankfully, the chorus is pretty short. Second verse has the same innocent, thoughtful mood as the first, but it's pretty short too. Back to the chorus... and a third verse? The mood the vocals make me visualize Tomoko strolling through a park or something. Bridge is really nice -- nothing amazing, but nice. Next chorus sounds quite a bit less awkward. There's minimal Engrish in this song; definitely feel like that's a plus. Smooth outro, fading distortion.

TRACK 03: Do You Know My Heart
Can an intro be calm and upbeat at the same time? Feels like another "stroll through the park" song to me. Vocals are very cheerful, maybe relaxing. Kind of like... the first day of summer feeling. Chorus has weird Engrish... most of it is pretty decipherable, and there are no "don't scary"'s at the very least. Mood doesn't really seem to fluctuate as we go though, and I'm starting to get tired of the carefree cheerfulness. Second chorus is just as awkward as the first. I have a hard time describing Tomoko's Engrish as anything other than "awkward," huh? Awkward Engrish leads into outro and it ends pretty quickly after that.

TRACK 04: Sad End To A Fairy Tale
A more sad kind of intro. Good. More of the thoughtfulness from "Leaving You." I think the guitar in this. Like the bridge from the first verse to the chorus too, though the chorus itself was kind of short and plain. Hm, as nice and calm as the music is so far, I'm really getting bored quickly -- there doesn't seem to be very much in the way of real energy -- just a lot of cuteness and coyness? Where is the forcefulness? Where is the spark? Bridge has more of the nice guitar and some pretty sustained notes. Bridge repeats the same kind of mood and lackluster energy; what I can understand of the lyrics are pretty uninspiring too. Slow outro, buzz out to end.

TRACK 05: Shut Up
More energetic energy... some more serious sounding vocals. Less cute anyway. Melody is catchy, but somewhat repetitive. Chorus brings back the happy j-poppy feeling. Second verse returns to the lower register, but it doesn't last long. Does "lower" mean "more serious"? Not necessarily, but all of her higher notes and melodies are starting to blur here. The best thing about this song is probably it's repetitive drill, which might get annoying after a while, but it's at least memorable. This is a really short song though -- only 2:36. Ends suddenly.

TRACK 06: Flower Crown
Neat bass intro. Another, kind-of-the-same-thoughtful vocal intro. Bass continues to be awesome. Vocals, melody, and mood, not so much. Well, okay, the mood is definitely darker than before. Makes me think we're sneaking up on someone. Chorus has some awkward hooks in the tune, like the pitch is off again. Some of the Engrish leading into the bridge is kind of lulzy. Man, this tempo is putting me to sleep. I want need some of the much more energetic stuff, c'mon...

TRACK 07: Surely
Upbeat, but not upbeat enough! Vocals are soft again, happy and contemplative. God, I just want some variation. T_T These vocals are really cute though... chorus loses it, but the melody is calming. More strolling in a park music. Perhaps playing frisbee. Really, this song could be an insert to any cheesy, happy montage in a movie or series. It's very charming in that way. I kind of wish it wasn't so late in the album -- I kind of think I'd be more happy with it if I weren't so worn with this mood already. The bridge is really sweet. Reintroduction of the vocals don't seem to fit that well, but gaw, Tomoko's voice is so cute. D: I don't even think she's trying to be. Ending is kind of awkward and sudden...

TRACK 08: Gonna Change My Way Of Life (YouTube it)
Generic kind of opening, though it does have some interesting buzzing. Chorus has a lot of Engrish -- automatically awkward sounding, though not too terrible, I guess. This song has a much more forceful melody, especially at the end. Nothing else to really say though...

TRACK 09: Playground (YouTube it)
Hm, immediate vocal intro. Much more energetic! The vocals still seem a bit on the tame side, but the emotion feels clearer. I like the tempo here a lot, and the lyrics string together very well! The Engrish is the best I've heard on the entire album, and for once, they aren't awkward! They actually work pretty well and integrate neatly with the Japanese. Some nice guitar and sustained vocals leading into the bridge -- bridge has a good guitar solo. Vocals ease back in nicely. Once again, the Engrish here is pretty decent. :O I think this is my favorite song on the album so far. Very well done. Sudden ending though.

TRACK 10: Things I Can Do
Seems like we're keeping the more upbeat tempo -- nice intro. Vocals come in rather energetically; tone is still quite upbeat and thoughtful, but she seems much more into it. The melody is pretty nice; Engrish goes back to being a little awkward, but there isn't that much of it. Really enjoying how the rest of the lyrics string together -- keeps a good beat. Verses meld into choruses really well too. Tomoko definitely seems more into this song than many of the others. Final chorus stands out nicely after the bridge; the energy remains steady... ending is again sudden though.

TRACK 11: You Should Live In The Sunny Light (YouTube it)
Dark, slow intro. Vocals seem haunting. Never really picks up though. Very steady and kind of boring. Feels like we're at a funeral service. Damn, it's been half a song already? Nothing ever seems to change, and the guitar is kind of boring too. On another day, I might like this a lot better -- it does have a very distinct mood, after all, and Tomoko's vocals seem sincere at least -- but after an entire album of less-than-stellar songs, I just kinda want it to be over. There's very little in the way of landmarks in this song. I'm not sure where the verses are, where the choruses are -- it's especially hard since I don't have lyrics in front of me. It ends like it begins, and I feel nothing.

OVERALL: This was a pretty disappointing album... I only really liked tracks #9 and #10, but even they're nothing super outstanding. The rest of I Kill My Heart just seems like the same thing over and over again, and none of the songs seem to have the drive and energy that attracted me to Tommy heavenly6 in the first place. I'm also not sure why "Unlimited Sky" didn't make it on this album. Instead, it was released with Tommy heavenly6's compilation album that released in February. I suppose it's a decent strategy to release new stuff on a compilation album to get more people to buy it, but at the same time, it kind of contradicts the definition of "compilation" album.

Then again, "Unlimited Sky"'s mood would have clashed a lot with this album since it actually has the energy I'm looking for. Tommy heavenly6's first, self-titled album is still my favorite. I'm not sure how well this album did on the Oricon charts, but if its performance reflects my opinion of it, then I guess that's at least a reason for Sony to let go. Disappointing.

Pronunciations and Transliterations of Names

2009-06-04T17:31:00.003-04:00

So in Code Geass, Emperor Charles zi Britannia is obviously British because Britannia is a glorified, alternate-universe Britain. Thus he has an English name. Makes sense. Since it's a Japanese show though, they have to transliterate the English name into Japanese, and Charles becomes シャルル (Sharuru). This has always bothered me. I just don't see the connection between "Charles" and "Sharuru." Of course I understand that many foreign words translated into Japanese sound strange because of their limited phonetic alphabet, and most of the time, I'd say they do pretty okay. But in this case, I'm thoroughly convinced that they could have picked a better transliteration with the sounds that they have. チャルズ (Charuzu), for example -- not worlds different, but different enough to be closer, right?

Further, "Sharuru" seems to be some kind of universally accepted Japanese version of "Charles" because Code Geass was not the only series where I heard the transliteration. Who decided that "Charles" should be "Sharuru"? If someone else decided that they wanted to transliterate it as "Charuzu," would they be wrong? Are there multiple ways to import a name into another language?

For the reverse case, Japanese names into English, the answer seems to be yes. For FUNimatioin's recent license, Spice and Wolf, they've decided to transliterate ホロ as "Holo" rather than the fan-preferred "Horo." Since the Japanese use the same sound where Westerners distinguish between L's and R's, either version can technically be correct. Nevertheless, the らりるれろ sounds are more often seen as R sounds (ra, ri, ru, re, ro) than L sounds (la, li, lu, le, lo). And for Horo's case in particular, I can't shake the idea that "Holo" will invoke "holographic" first and "awesome wolf deity" second. Meanwhile, "Horo" is kindasorta similar to "Horus" an Egyptian falcon god.

And then there is the fun thing they do when they have English names transliterated into Japanese only to be transliterated back into English. Except that the two English versions don't match. The best example of this is probably Simon from Gurren Lagann. The Japanese have no character for "si," only し/シ ("shi"), and so, Simon was pronounced シモン ("Shimon"). When Gurren Lagann was dubbed by Bandai, they kept that pronunciation, presumably because of perceived fan pressure. The same can be said for Viral, which retained the "vee-rall" pronunciation instead of "fixing" it back to "vhai-rul."

In Horo's case, fan preference may be more legitimate since the name isn't English to begin with, but in Simon and Viral's cases, should Bandai have given in? Would it really have been that weird to hear the names pronounced "correctly"? I don't really think so. And if they were going to play it the Japanese way, why didn't they go all the way with Viral and leave it as "V/Biraru"? That'd be pushing it too far with the lip movements, I guess? It can be debated whether or not Simon and Viral were intended to be English names to begin with -- even though they're obviously not Japanese, it's possible that they could be fantasy names instead. But they seem kind of plain for fantasy names, don't you think? After all, Japanese fantasy has come up with names such as Zelgadis Greywords, Filia Ul Copt, and Yozak Gurrier, and even those are Western-based. I wonder if there really is a "right" or "wrong" way to pronounce Simon and Viral since it's been passed through languages the way it has. I'm sure fanboys will swear to "Shimon" and "Vee-rall," but are they just subscribing to the Japanese's limited phonetics?

Still, as far as natively Japanese names go, I'm glad for the shift towards preservation of pronunciation. The Sakura in Card Captor Sakura was dubbed as "Sa-kuur-ah" with a long "u" sound. The more recent Sakura of Naruto has been dubbed more correctly as "Sah-kuu-rah" with a short "u." And yet, Akira was dubbed years ago correctly (with a soft "i" sound), and most people I know still pronounce it with a hard "i"?

One last thing... who the hell decided that they could name their child "Light" -- an obviously English word -- and then assign it the kanji for "moon"? (月 "tsuki") How does that even work?? Obviously, no one will intrinsically understand that "tsuki" should be read as "Light" (or ライト"Raito" since they can't actually pronounce "Light") because Misa didn't know offhand. So did Light just spend his life '"correcting" teachers saying, "No, ma'am, you're wrong, it's not 'tsuki' like it is in the dictionary, it's 'Raito'!"? Says who?? Your crazy parents?

Why do they get to decide that "Light" can be represented by 月 "tsuki"? Why didn't they just use 光 "hikari" which actually means "light"? Because Hikari is actually a legitimate name? (A female name, but a name nonetheless!) I guess they didn't want Light to go through life being mistaken as a girl during rolecall, so instead, they made him special by giving him the wrong character for the translation? Maybe that's why he turned into such a megalomaniac.

The mystery of Light Yagami, solved!

Then again, the forcing of kanji for an English word has happened for things other than names.

Review: Star Trek (2009)

2009-05-31T20:01:00.005-04:00

My friends are always shocked and appalled at just how much modern pop culture I seem to have missed out on. Music, movies, and a few decades worth of references and jokes all go over my head. Before this, I had never seen a Star Trek movie. It wasn't avoidance; it was just a matter of no one ever sitting me down in front of a TV and saying, "Hey! Watch this movie!" I had seen an episode or two of Next Generation once while wasting time in my roommate's room, but that was about it. I liked that episode or two (because Patrick Stewert is kind of awesome), but it wasn't enough to make me go out of my way to see more of it, especially since I don't have a TV myself.

The aforementioned roommate is actually a closet Trekkie, but I guess "closet" negates any evangelical aspect. Still, roomie's [also Trekkie] parents were in town last weekend and offered to treat, so why the hell not? Let's go see a movie. Who cares if it's finals weekend?

(this review contains no spoilers!)

Star Trek

STORY & PACING - The story starts off hard and fast, but it's straightforward and easy to follow. The introduction builds up rather quickly, advancing through several years and characters in a short span of time, but despite me literally not knowing anything about this extensive franchise before walking into the theatre, I was never lost or confused. Everything that happens is intriguing, and the fast pace keeps you continually entertained -- there is never, ever a dull moment and everything connects together wonderfully. Star Trek takes itself seriously, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of hilarious shenanigans either. The kind of hook the movie has is impressive in itself, but I was mostly happy with the fact that I could follow it perfectly so well without any prior knowledge -- something that I always worry about for movies with established fanbases.

Of course, I couldn't personally catch all of the bones they were tossing the existing fans, but the others I saw it with definitely could and spent the car ride back from the theatre raving about it. So not only was the movie completely accessible to a new fan, but older fans had the pleasure of catching tons of references and seeing their favorite characters on a shiny new screen full of shiny new effects.

As the story goes along, a few plot holes inevitably come up because of the nature of the story, but the excellent pacing disguises those holes well enough that you don't really think about them until well after the fact. That makes the story solid enough on its own, especially since it's a very character-driven narrative. What actually happens to the characters is secondary to their personal development and emotional pull you get from them, and those are always my favorite kinds of stories.

CHARACTER & ACTING - My friends tell me that the casting job for this movie was amazing. They had the previous versions of the characters to consider, but even without knowing those, I could tell that the casting job here was amazing. As far as physical appearances go, I could kind-of recall what the original actors for Spock and Sulu looked like and found their new actors to be incredibly impressive, fitting, updated versions of their previous incarnations. I didn't bother doing post-movie comparisons of the others since I seriously had no knowledge of what the others looked like (yes, including Shatner's Captain Kirk because I lived under a really, really big rock). Appearance isn't as important as personality anyway, right?

My friends tell me that the acting was pretty spot on as well. My roommate mentioned Bones being a particularly well done portrayal, and numerous others cite Spock. For me, I just enjoyed the characters and acting for what they were. All of the actors portraying characters aboard the Enterprise succeeded in making their roles engaging and interesting. I would have liked to know more about Kirk's childhood, but his development from late teens and onward was very well done, especially considering how little of it we actually see. Spock is probably the most interesting character in the movie though -- we see more of his childhood and consequently, his conflicts and personality are easier to understand and relate to. (Halfling characters are also supremely sympathetic by nature.) Nevertheless, Spock and Kirk mature and grow equally as characters, and their interacting is probably what makes the movie's finale as awesome as it was.

The only character that I had issues with was Captain Nero, who contributed most of the plot holes in the movie thanks to the huge gaps in his logic. He was too much of a stereotypical villain -- the awkward timeframe made the beginning of the movie more forgiving than the end in terms of motivation, but it was just all around pretty plain. Still, with so much of the movie focused on the development of Kirk and Spock, the fact that they had quite the lacking antagonist wasn't that important.

The rest of the supporting cast was a lot of fun. Having an Asian, a black woman, a Scot, and a Russian on board was hilarious in its own right, especially since the former two had outrageous accents. It's a cast that's reminiscent of the time the franchise was conceived, but the humor that comes with such a cast is one that has successfully transcended time. All the stereotypes were positive and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes, making all the characters positively endearing. Good times.

ART & ANIMATION - This is a beautiful movie. Most of the special effects looked amazing without being so over-the-top and extravagant that it distracted you from the issues at hand. The ships all looked great; the lasers, the warping -- seriously, everything looked gorgeous. The only two things I can think to nitpick are 1) lens flare made a huge comeback in this movie. But if you wanna technical, sunlight would be a helluva lot more prominent in space, so it makes sense there?? Sorta kinda maybe? And 2) the Romulan ship looked similar to many casual 3d renders I've seen people make -- it's mostly just shininess with very little comprehensible structure. The zoomed in views of the ship looked markedly better, but it still didn't make a lot of structural sense to me. Oh well. Aliens, right?

The aliens themselves were all well integrated into the cast. Whether or not they were important characters, none of them seemed too out of place or particularly ridiculous. Like many other things, I understand that a lot of the aliens were probably cameos, thrown out as treats to the established fans, but for a newcomer, these things weren't distracting at all. Star Trek took itself seriously, but that didn't hurt it one bit. Yeah, most of the important races are just humans with funny ears, but believability was never an issue. It looked great.

MUSIC - Excellent. Star Trek has one hell of an epic soundtrack. For movies with lots of action, it isn't unusual for me to be so engrossed in what's going on that I completely forget to take note of the music, but the soundtrack here was impossible to ignore. It was very strong and almost overpowering for some scenes, making everything that much more amazing to watch and look at. The music for the less adrenaline-pumped sequences is a little less memorable, but such is the nature of the beast... not that there were all that many scenes that weren't action anyway.

OVERALL - Going into it, I already knew that the general consensus amongst fans was that this movie was fantastic, which would likely translate well for a newcomer. Despite that though, it's always weird walking into a movie blind -- I don't know what I was expecting. Suffice to say that I was blown away. I wanted to see the movie again as soon as the credits started rolling. The positives far outweighed the negatives here, and I would recommend this to anyone.

Dropped: Shangri-La

2009-05-26T17:24:00.005-04:00

Took me long enough, right? Seriously, who else is still actually watching this crap?

I really hope this doesn't become some kind of annoying trend. Aside from this season's two big remakes (FMA and DBK), Shangri-La was the only series I picked up. And like last season's Kurokami, it's now getting its lame ass dropped for pretty much all the same reasons.

When I read over all the summaries of the series set to debut for spring, Shangri-La was the only thing that really caught my eye. It's premise sounded really interesting, and you can't say the idea of using a country's carbon emissions as a currency isn't awesome. Unfortunately, that's this series one and only merit. The premise doesn't even translate into a plot because I watched seven, long and arduous episodes, and I still don't know what the plot is. That's the only reason I stuck with it so long -- I really, really wanted to know what the plot was, but I guess if I can't find it in seven episodes, then the whole thing's just a waste of time.

Since there's no actual plot, each episode is just a string of events about uninteresting characters that the audience is unfortunate enough to be following. This was especially painful for me since I much, much prefer character-driven stories over plot-driven stories, but I didn't give a damn about a vast majority of the ensemble cast, and the few that do seem kindasorta interesting don't have very many scenes. I could not sympathize with Kuniko, especially since she seemed so purposeless while also being popular for no reason. It didn't make sense to me, and all her subsequent struggles were just incredibly boring.

Her supporting cast was similarly unsympathetic, especially since we're given no background on how the current government system has been mistreating the populous. Nobody's motivation was clear. The grandmother's secrecy and decision not to tell Kuniko anything was a frustrating and probably pointless excuse to delay the plot. Ryoko was more of a poorly done evil caricature than an actual character. It really annoyed me that they created another character named Major Kusanagi. Momoko's antics seemed too forceful to be humorous.

The only character that interested me was the lolipop girl; unsurprisingly, that was because she was the only one that seemed to be involved with the plot, whatever it is. Naturally, she only ever shows up briefly and is cryptic with a lot of things she says. Like Kurokami, the main problem with Shangri-La is that it's difficult to relate to or sympathize with any of the characters. What makes Shangri-La worse than Kurokami is the fact that we don't even know most of the characters' motivations. Why are they doing what they're doing? What are they trying to accomplish? Why should we care?

You can maybe infer that Metal-Age is trying to expose whatever government conspiracy took place however long ago, and you can also maybe say that Kuniko wants to find a way for everyone to "live happily," but the former is too much of a given, and the latter is too general to be interesting.

I guess GONZO really is ready to kick the bucket then. Maybe I should have known it would be bad when we get really bad fanservice in the very first scene of the first episode? What a disappointment. Crunchyroll's subs were good, too, and even though the character designs were kind of shoddy (Japan, please stop trying to pass twelve year-olds off as legal), the animation was pretty nice, and the music was decent too. But we all know that those things don't hold up a show.

Review: HYDE's HYDE

2009-05-19T02:24:00.002-04:00

HYDE

HYDE's 1st compilation album
18th March, 2009

Usually my album reviews are labeled "first impressions" instead of "reviews" because I think it's an interesting angle to compile my first thoughts on an album during my initial hearing of it; impressions of music are more prone to changing over time and a tenth hearing may very well be different from a second hearing. But that theme doesn't really apply here as its a compilation album! HYDE's first solo compilation album, uninspiredly entitled HYDE, contains all of his singles, as well as a few popular tracks from his four existing albums.

So that portion of his discography isn't really isn't something I listen to often. There are a few songs I like, sure, but the majority is kind of just "eh." Still, compilation albums are a good way to revisit things, right? I figure, what the hell.

TRACK 01: Made in Heaven
As Faith is my least favorite HYDE album, I don't remember this song very well at all. There's a nice guitar opening; intro vocals are pretty typical of HYDE's solo work, though a bit rough and forceful. This is in Engrish, but I can't understand much beyond a word here and there. I kinda feel bad because it sounds like he's trying so hard. The chorus doesn't stand out much and sounds pretty awkward with the poor Engrish. It leads into the second verse with little pause; meanwhile, the music in the background isn't very interesting as it isn't changing up much. Most of this song blurs together for me, including the end.

TRACK 02: It's Sad
Another song from Faith. Really neat guitar opening... opening vocals are again forced and rough, not my favorite style for HYDE, but the guitars remain interesting, uptight, and suspenseful. Chorus is a more typical sound, but I'm much more interested in the guitars at the moment. Vocals lighten up a bit in the second verse; the Engrish feels more casual and confident, but I still can't understand most of it without a lyrics sheet. Bridge includes a female vocal mixed in with some speaking parts from HYDE and then another chorus. I find it more jarring than anything else though; HYDE's goal with Faith was to stir some deep, soul-felt emotions, but I'm too caught up in the technicalities here. This is not HYDE's best vocal work, and the guitars don't really save it in the end.

TRACK 03: Evergreen [Dist.]
"Evergreen" from ROENTGEN is actually a solo song I like! And the Engrish version from ROENTGEN.english is actually mostly understandable. This rock version is also in Engrish and was first released as a B-side on the "Countdown" single. All the guitar distortion masks over the vocals though, making it harder to hear. Not sure if I like that, but it does give the guitars a solid limelight. The chorus guitars seem to be a little off from the vocals. ...It really bothers me that HYDE doesn't pronounce the "m" in memory... it's kind of an important sound. There are some drawn-out sounds in the bridge and it fades into a nice guitar solo and then end. Ehh, neat, but not my favorite version of Evergreen. I'll stick with the original.

TRACK 04: Jesus Christ (YouTube it)
Another one from Faith. I've always remembered this one as my least favorite from the album. The Engrish is also pretty understandable in this one, but that makes me uncomfortable to some extent since I'm not too fond of the subject matter. The vocals don't seem to match up well with the music and there doesn't seem to be much of a melody. The falsetto in the chorus is beautiful, but there's still no melody. There's a lenghty solo between the first chorus and the second verse, and then they add a nice piano tune. Unfortunately, the piano really just adds to the chaos of other sounds and still, nothing sounds particularly cohesive. Still... as we move into the second chorus and that lovely falsetto, the emotional power of the song starts to really seep through. HYDE is really into it and that shows. I'm not into religious music, but I guess it is somewhat moving to hear someone else invest so much energy into it.

TRACK 05: Countdown (YouTube it)
Next song on Faith. Geez, way too much of this album is stuff from Faith! D: This is the first song with Japanese in it though, so hurray for that. I much prefer HYDE's vocals in Japanese because they sound infinitely more natural and therefore not distracting. That isn't to say there isn't still Engrish here, but it isn't overwhelming... and because there is Japanese, we can pretend that his Engrish is still Japanese and not try to decipher his words. Vocals are pretty typical here and don't change much as the song progresses. I'm not too fond of the music here; it's like the previous song in its mish-mash of sounds without a distinct melody. Outro has some spoken parts that are out of place, then buzz out to end. I'm remembering why Faith is my least favorite album.

TRACK 06: The Other Side
Hey, I have no idea where this song is from! Hard guitar intro, though it still sounds muddied. Strong vocal intro, but the energy fades quickly. Melody is a bit clearer now though, and the first verse sounds pretty nice. Guitar and vocals match up nicely; lyrics are in Engrish, but fairly understandable (not quite up to Evergreen's level though). Chorus is forceful and energetic, but I don't like the music there until the vocals end and it's a solo to the second verse. Vocals and Engrish are very clear at the second verse; I really like the rhytmn guitar here, but the lead is distracting. Second chorus is slightly less conflicting than the first as the music in the background matches up a bit better. Buzz out to end. Wish I knew where this song was from?

TRACK 07: Shining Over You (YouTube it)
Finally! A song from 666, my favorite HYDE solo album! (Is it too ironic that my favorite and least favorite HYDE albums should be titled as they are?) Awesome violin intro and sweet vocals full of falsetto. There's a nice countermelody in the background music to match the main melody of the vocals. Verse is Japanese to counter the Engrish in the chorus, which is actually what the song starts off with, and there are some pretty awesome parts where HYDE is harmonizing with himself. Again, I enjoy the Japanese a lot more than the Engrish, and the Engrish goes back and forth a lot in this song -- sometimes it's pretty clear, and sometimes I have no idea what he's saying. There are some neat bass lines in the verses too though. Bridge is kind of drawn out; slow outro and then fade out. Oh, hey, this thing is six minutes long, but I didn't notice at all.

TRACK 08: Horizon
Another one from 666. Nice and calm intro with relaxed guitars and a strong voice; lyrics are in Japanese. I like the forcefulness of HYDE's voice here -- in songs like "It's Sad," I feel like he's trying too hard, but here, he just sounds really, really into it. Verses have some gorgeous falsetto, and I really like the beginning of the chorus. Love, love, love the guitars in the bridge; the drums there are pretty fun too. The verse after the bridge is probably the best part of the song. There's some vocal distortion and canon leading into the final chorus that's pretty badass too. Not too fond of the repeating lyrics in the outro, but ah well.

TRACK 09: Season's Call
Back to Faith. This is the fifth song from Faith and we're only on track nine. Oh well. "Season's Call" has a nice, soft guitar opening that leads into some more energetic riffs. Opening vocals are also good, energetic in that reserved kind of way. HYDE's voice is really beautiful here; lyrics are in Japanese. Falsetto seems kind of random though, and I'm not too fond of the melody as we get halfway through the verse. It just sounds kind of awkward. Kind of blah chorus, but once we get to the second verse, everything's spiffy again... until about halfway through! Oh, weird, random Engrish after the second chorus as we get into the bridge... the sounds in the background are getting chaotic again. It's creates an uncomfortable, kind of itchy-scratchy feeling. Ugh, not fond of the continued Engrish. Kind of just want the song to end now... why is this five and a half minutes long.

TRACK 10: Sweet Vanilla
Back to 666. Rock guitars are rockin' out. Oh, man, I love how the vocals in this open. It's Engrish, but wonderfully understandable, and then it moves back to Japanese. The difference in sound between this and the previous are so obvious, and it's the difference between the two albums. The chorus goes back to Engrish, but again, it's understandable, and the lyrics are really sweet in that cute sort of way, which is particularly amusing since the Japanese portions of the verses are really badass sounding. The vocals in this song are pretty much everything I love most about HYDE's voice. Everything sounds genuine. The "believe me, believe me," are probably the best part. The guitar melody in the bridge isn't really that interesting, but it's fun and works well for the mood of the song. Final chorus ends on kind of a forceful note and the song ends soon after that, but I definitely remember this being a great opening track for 666. I still like it a lot.

TRACK 11: HELLO (YouTube it)
This is the second track on 666 and thus correct follows the previous song. Annnd... "Hello" is my favorite HYDE song overall. I love the energetic guitar intro and the mood it creates -- it's very nostalgic feeling. HYDE's opening vocals really pick up that mood well; it's forceful in bursts, but eases into more relaxed notes in between. The lyrics are in Japanese and just feel good. I love the way it moves into the chorus here~. <3 The melody in the chorus is also very memorable. The verses here really show off HYDE's lower registers, so it's a nice break from his falsettos. Second verse leads into a bit of distortion and some typical synth stuff, but it's a nice intermission before we get to the build up to the final chorus which contains a bit of Engrish. The final chorus feels a little less energetic than those before it, but the sincerity of the voice doesn't fade. Wind down, wind down. Ends with the name of the song.

TRACK 12: Hideaway
This is the closing track for 666, now we're even with five and five for both Faith and 666. This opens with a really homely sound. Japanese and Engrish interchanged frequently; love the energy, liveliness, and sincerity here. Guitars are simple but effective. Some steady drums into the second verse. The Engrish is only understandable in bursts, but it isn't very distracting. The overall feel of this song is very American punk rock to me. It has the same kind of challenge the world mood to it somehow, and honestly, the lyrics don't make it seem that far off. Really enjoyable song overall.

TRACK 13: Prayer
Sixth song from 666 now, oh snap! Kind of an awkward opening: heavy guitar in between long silences. Then, consistent heavy guitars and a vocal intro you don't really notice until several seconds in. Serious business kind of sound... at least until the next punctuated silence, then it just sounds kind of normal? Still lovin' the vocal quality here, though the Engrish lyrics aren't as nice as far as understanding go. Subject matter-wise, this song probably wouldn't do too terribly on Faith, but the sound is much more classic HYDE than the rest of the stuff on Faith. The melody is solid and cohesive, though the guitars aren't all that interesting. Really... even though HYDE's vocals are pretty nice here, the rest of the song really bores me.

TRACK 14: Midnight Celebration
Seventh song from 666! As much as I do like 666, this is kind of silly since 666 is only a ten-track album! I've always found "Midnight Celebration" to be kind of a hilarious song because it's just so stereotypically... vampiric. Still, it's a fun and energetic song with a strong opening and very understandable Engrish lyrics. The chorus is my favorite part; it's great 'cause HYDE sounds so darn serious, but the vampiric overtones of the entire song just make me laugh. Bridge is pretty typical, but the guitars are nice to listen to regardless. The energy throughout the last round of choruses wraps things up nice and neat at the end too.

TRACK 15: Unexpected [Dist.]
Rock version of the original song on ROENTGEN; similar to the version of "Evergreen" above, this version was released as a B-side on the "Season's Call" single. Kind of a boring intro that leads into some awkward, distorted vocals. Vocals remain distorted and music remains boring -- it's really hard to even tell if the lyrics are in Japanese or Engrish, but I know them to be Engrish. Finally get to something resembling a chorus about halfway through the song; vocals become undistorted, but the Engrish is still difficult to understand. The vocals do have some nice energy here, but the music isn't really helping. It slows down significantly again and almost seems to end, but then it leads on into the bridge, which sounds kind of odd because it actually has a decent melody. HYDE's vocals echo through it, but the longer the bridge goes on for, the more boring it gets? Kind of just want it to end now, but it's another five minute song. Argh. Outro takes forever to fade out too.

TRACK 16: The Cape of Storms
Third song from ROENTGEN, but not a later released rock version. Intro has a very classic feel to it. Lyrics are in Engrish and pretty hard to decipher except for a word here or there. Melody and vocal quality are pretty nice here, though I also find the melody to be kind of plain and uninteresting. Tempo slows significantly as we get into the first verse; mood gets very mysterious and suspenseful. There's some interesting use of different instruments here as well, like harmonica and something that sounds kind of like a marimba? Chorus returns with the uninteresting melody; HYDE's vocals are emotional and feel sincere enough, but it's bordering on that "trying too hard" kind of feeling. Second verse is slow and I'm really getting bored. Five minute and forty-five second song is so long~. D;

TRACK 17: glamorous sky [English version] (YouTube it)
This is probably the song I was most excited about when I glanced over the track list. I love "glamorous sky." I love Mika Nakashima's vocals on it, but hearing HYDE sing the song was really interesting too. I didn't know there was an English version of it though?? Excitement here! Intro is odd and disorienting for all of a moment, and then the vocals start. The sound is very, very different here -- the music is much more rockish, the tempo's faster, and HYDE's vocals are weird! The lyrics are strange and I can't understand anything that wasn't already Engrish in the original. Well, I guess "ano" in the choruses turned into "I know" something, but beyond that is beyond me. The difference in the guitars in the back is really, really throwing me off -- it sounds a lot more like a DDR song because the melody is so much more forceful. I have mixed feelings about the vocals; the quality really isn't HYDE's best and the lyrics continue to sound strange.

Haha, "nemurenai yo" turned into "I won't be sleeping." I guess that works out?? It's always interesting to see how much of the original meaning carries over since they're usually more concerned about preserving syllables than translation. The bridge sounds really weird this sped up; the lyrics get a little more understandable, but ... not really. The parts that match up well with the original translation are the parts I pick up more easily. The last round of choruses are all right; the slightly slowed tempo doesn't particularly help the awkwardness of both the lyrics and the guitars though. What a weird way to end this album. What I really want to hear now is Mika Nakashima singing this version of the song though... and perhaps we can wrestle some kind of duet out of them. That would be hot.

OVERALL: Really, I don't know what the point of releasing this compilation album was... HYDE only has three albums to his solo name! This compilation was unnecessarily long and contains more than half of both 666 and Faith. Really, you might as well pick up those original two albums! It doesn't have nearly as much as ROENTGEN, which might be legitimately harder to find, except that two of three included tracks were re-released rock versions, so that's kind of a moot point? The only real point of interest was the last track, which would have probably done just as well released as a special single or as a B-side to another single. The timing of this release also feels weird -- I mean, HYDE just got together with K.A.Z to make VAMPS and they're touring, so why's he reminding fans of old stuff instead of pushing his new stuff? (Oh, man, VAMPS cover of "glamorous sky," why is this so awesome.)

Oh, well. It's not a bad album if you're looking to hear a decent cross section of HYDE's solo work, but if you're already familiar with his solo work, then there isn't really a long enough history to reminisce over here.

Review: Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Menace

2009-05-17T15:15:00.003-04:00

Bucky O'Hare was one of those awesome cartoons from the 90's that almost no one seems to remember nowadays. Bucky was the underdog beating up toads in space while the Ninja Turtles beat up foot soldiers in Manhattan. I have many fond memories of it, though I don't think I actually ever saw the entirety of the thirteen-episode series back in the day. Still, the fondness stayed with me, and I was excited when I found out that the TV show was based on a comic series.

The comic was written by Larry Hama and penciled by Michael Golden. Hama is a third-generation Japanese-American, but that doesn't really explain why I've always thought Bucky O'Hare had a very anime/manga feel to it. The original comic ran in the late 80's and only had one plotline; more were written to coincide with the TV series when it debuted in 1990. The original comic along with two of the later, additional issues were collected together in a manga-like graphic novel released by Vanguard in 2007. I have no idea why they didn't include the rest of the additional issues, but it doesn't really matter. I ordered my copy of Vanguard's release of Bucky O'Hare when I ordered my copy of Viz's releaseof DOGS vol. 0, and I gotta say: Bucky's comic is very disappointing.

(this review contains no spoilers!)

Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars

STORY - Bucky O'Hare presents an intriguing story. In an alternate universe populated by various anthropomorphic animals, the toads have developed their own Skynet named KOMPLEX which then proceeds to enslave not only their race, but uses them them to begin enslaving the rest of the universe. The mammals are bound together by a haphazard political system that refuses to recognize the severity of the toads' threat; thus, they are only willing to fund one defense ship: Bucky's ship, The Righteous Indignation. Of course, there's also lots of other weird stuff, including your human that's transported from our world for one reason or another, but hey, it was the 80's!

For the most part, the first two or three episodes of the TV series followed the comic's original plotline, which is very engaging and fun. The comic's conclusion for the arc differs greatly, however, and honestly, I found the comic's ending to be pretty weak, far-fetched and anticlimatic, but that could just be my bias towards the TV show. The two additional issues that are also included in the volume follow various things that were introduced in the TV show, but they don't connect very well to where the original story left off, so I really wonder why they bothered? Especially since they didn't include the other ten issues that were produced and it doesn't really seem like they have plans to.

The things that struck me most about the story though, was just how it was told in the comic. The "chapters" within the original arc seem to mimic episodes of a television series in that they had recaps at the beginning of every chapter that repeated the same half dozen panels of the previous chapter. This threw me off so much when I read the chapters back to back and saw the repeated panels, which were often reframed so that they were cropped or zoomed in differently. Even if the comic was published in separate issues originally, I find the practice of reframing panels really strange -- Western comics don't do that. You either bought the previous issue or you didn't! Maybe you'll have a quick textual recap on the opening credits page, but not the exact panels from the last issue! What kind of lazy filler crap is that??

There were also really, really awkward two-page spreads. Awkward as in, you had to turn the book around sideways because they were giant, vertical panels. It is so incredibly jarring to be reading through and suddenly there's a huge spread's sideways. Who's bright idea was this?

CHARACTER - Most of the characters don't really get a chance to develop in the original arc. In fact, I found it woefully ironic that Bucky was probably the least interesting of the lot. He's the captain of the ship! And... that's about it. There's very little character beyond that -- he takes information offered by his crew and makes predictable decisions, failing to demonstrate any higher thinking or commanding abilities that have him earn our respect. Thinking back, the show's version of Bucky wasn't that much different to begin with, but he developed a lot more as the series progressed -- should I hold it against the original that it wasn't long enough to work that out?

Willy faced a similar problem and felt like a huge Gary Stu character admist the animals. Blinky seemed like more of a gimmicky mascot than a character. The Air Marshall and most of the toads were also rather flat, and the creepy mouse was just creepy and unexplainable. The most interesting characters in the comic were Deadeye and Jenny, who actually exhibited personality. They had an interesting dynamic between them that suggested backstory, and in Jenny's case, she got further backstory via her "witch powers," which begged many questions and therefore made her interesting. If the duck and the cat could get that kind of thought and treatment, then why not everyone else? Further irony? Deadeye and Jenny are the least developed characters in the handful of episodes of the TV series that mirror the comic.

Vanguard's release inserted short character files in between some of the chapters that included characters' full name, rank, and weapon of choice, as well as a completely stupid, pointless, and superfluous "biography."

ART - Michael Golden's style is a strange blend of Western and Eastern, which is pretty peculiar considering Bucky's age. That style conflict is something we talk about frequently now, but back in the 80's? Most of the animal characters have gigantic eyes and outrageous expressions and the backgrounds, props, and environments are exhaustively detailed. The graphic novel is in plain black and white; the inking job is very Eastern. With minimal spot blacks in most panels, it really seems like it'd be suited for tones. For the most part, the art is enjoyable, but many of the zoomed out long shots are confusing because of the detail.

Here's the thing that disappointed me the most with the comic though: in addition to the aforementioned repeated panels at the beginning and end of chapters, and in addition the sprawling, awkward vertical spreads, several panels are recycled throughout the volume. These panels were not reused to rehash events in the last chapter. They were flat out reused because the artist was too damn lazy to draw the same or similar expression again. The first time it happened, I did a double take. It was a, "Wait, didn't I see this exact panel several pages earlier...? Holy shit, I did!" moment. And I would flip back and forth, confirming that it was indeed the same panel, just flipped over, as if that would make it less obvious. And the worst of it? Sometimes panels were repeated not only once, but twice, and for this one shot of Jenny, it was repeated THREE TIMES after its initial debut. Are you freakin' kidding me??

Not only is this just ridiculous, but it also emphasizes that Golden really didn't have too many ways to draw the same kind of expression -- even when he did actually draw a new panel, many of them were remarkably reminiscent of others previous. It's like watching a one-trick pony. He'll perform the trick multiple times and usually there will be slight variations, but you know, at the end of the day, it's still the same damn trick. Super, super disappointing.

The two issues in the back by a different team of artists don't suffer this problem and they mimic Golden's style all right; still, the inks are noticably thicker and there are far less details.

OVERALL - The Bucky O'Hare comic has become one of those things that I'm glad I personally bought and read, but that I would never recommend to others. I was curious and now my curiosity is satisfied; I do vaguely wonder about those other ten issues that were adapted from the TV series, but it's not a burning curiosity. The best thing that the comic had going for it was undoubtedly its premise and concept, which was successfully adapted into a wonderful TV series, so that's what everyone should check out. The story in the television show is much better thought out because there was more room; similarly, the show's characters were more three-dimensional and well thought out. The comic's art is impressive in its detail and style, but I don't think I can forgive Golden for his lazy, recycled panels. The cartoon's art is much simpler and decidedly not impressive to any degree, but it wasn't terrible, so whatever, eh?

Picking Favorites

2009-05-15T20:46:00.005-04:00

So I have this problem with the listed favorites in my MAL profile (the anime moreso than the manga). I feel like the list is out of date because I haven't really updated it since I joined the site last June, and I've seen at least a dozen very good series since then. So many series could easily move into that empty fifth slot, and so many other series seem like they're viable contenders for the titles that are already there. How do you go about choosing? Which factors are more relevant than others? And for a public listing, how much are you going to invest in using your declared favorites to brand yourself?

As far as the branding goes, my favorites list kind of makes me laugh. The only real point of unity is mecha, which I didn't realize was something I cared for as much as I do until I compiled the list in the first place. What kind of person do I come across with such a list? Gurren Lagann is almost a cop out because there are very few people that don't care for it; perhaps having it there makes me ordinary. Code Geass is something that might start some polarizing debates on the aniblogosphere, but the first season is almost universally accepted to be more worthy than the second. So maybe that makes me oridinary also. Gundam SEED seems to be hated on a grand scale and many Gundam fans seem to associate liking it with being ignorant. Stand Alone Complex is another title that faces little criticism, but a few dislike it for its rampant politics. So maybe having it there makes me look smart.

So, what does this list say about me on the whole? I am mostly an ordinary mecha fan that enjoys both testosterone-filled gar and intelligent political drama, but is ignorant towards the Gundam franchise. Not really sure if that's the exact branding I would choose for myself, but I wouldn't say the description is wildly inaccurate either.

Self-branding is an interesting thing, particularly when it's of a social consequence and not a commercial one. Sites like MAL allow for the traditional judging that used to take place when you took a look at the books on someone's shelf or what they're reading on the bus. It might be bad to judge based on negative stereotypes, but the judging that takes place when you glance over someone's favorites list is something that I'd consider to be nearly always useful. Whether comparing lists comes up with more similarities or differences is largely irrelevant as long as you aren't derisively writing someone off completely for holding whatever series in high regard (that would be negatively stereotyping). There's a difference between thinking, "Oh, this person likes mostly sappy shoujo titles, I guess we don't have much in common," and thinking, "lol, this idiot only likes mainstream shounen, what a useless newb."

If there are only differences, well, no loss, and you've saved everyone time by not pursuing a conversation that would have likely led no where. If there are only similarities, then perhaps you've found a fangasm buddy with which you can merrily spout fanboyish or fangirlish nonsense with. The best list comparisons come up with both similarities and differences; they are the things that prompt conversations like, "I see you like such and such also, but also that you enjoyed so and so -- what was it about so and so that you liked? I didn't find it very satisfying." And lovely discussions (or interesting debates) ensue and friendship, rivalry, and comraderie spreads across the Internet! Hurray! Judging is built into our social structure for a reason; it'd be a shame to cast it off completely.

It does make the self-conscious even more self-conscious though. Even online, you have an appearance. Picking the series that go on your favorites list is like picking a fashion to wear. And you have to find something that both satisfy you and your desire to be presentable to the public. Luckily, I've never been too bothered by the latter, so I'm fine with people thinking I'm an ignorant Gundam fan for having SEED as my favorite. When I commented on his aforementioned related post, ghostlightning mentioned that all the titles on my list are fairly recent, which might indicate that I'm a newer fan. I'm not, really, but oddly enough, the nostalgia factor hasn't been that big for me. My old favorites include Gundam Wing, Yu Yu Hakusho, BECK, Dragonball Z, Cowboy Bebop (you know, the Toonami golden days!), and My Neighbor Totoro, but I can see that my love for them is mostly because of nostalgia and not because they're actually better series than what's on the list now. It might be unconventional to consider the new better on all aspects than the old, so maybe I'll seem even more like an ignorant newbie, but hey, whatever, man.

My only problem is deciding what my "real" favorites are and correctly representing them on this damned list.

Back to my dilemma, huh? That favorites list needs updating. Who gets the empty fifth slot? And is there anyone already on the list that needs to be ousted? Here are the new contenders: Ouran High School Host Club, Nodame Cantabile, Mushishi, Planetes, and maybe even Lovely Complex. Score-wise, all of those series I've reviewed and scored with a 9 overall, except Love*Com, which has an 8. All of the series currently on the list are also 9's, except for TTGL, which is the only anime I've scored with a 10. Sometimes I wonder about that 10, but if anything else, TTGL is the only series thus far mentioned that I watched three times consecutively in a month. I guess it still deserves that top spot.

Since Love*Com is the lone 8 here, maybe it should be dropped from consideration (especially since there are a lot of other series I've scored with 9's that aren't up for consideration here), but even though both its technical merits and story/character merits are lower than the competition, it's a series that I've been rewatching random episodes from a lot lately -- what does that count for? Perhaps it's just a weird mood I've been in; after all, I don't usually take so readily to standard shoujo. Should a favorites list represent a more stable subset of favorites, or should it be more flexible? Should Love*Com be represented above the others just because I've really taken to it lately? Should it change and drop off as soon as I get out of this phase? That begs the question of, just how often should a favorites list be updated? Is there really anyone e-stalkerish enough to check that often? Or is it more for your own satisfaction?

Personally, I think I prefer the more stable route. It's too much trouble to constantly update something based on recent whims. Besides, the list is a better branding tool if it has series that stand up to the test of time, right? So Love*Com, as much as I love it, is out. That leaves four other series. What's the next factor to consider? Mushishi and Ouran probably have the highest rewatch value out of those four. Both series are fairly episodic and allow for better casual watching. Planetes and Nodame are both wonderful, but even though Nodame is largely slice of life, it does have a linear story, which hurts its rewatch potential to some extent since it's harder to jump in the middle. Planetes's first dozen episodes are also pretty episodic, but the latter half gets very character-involved and plot-heavy. How important do I want rewatch value to be?

It must be important if it's one of the reasons TTGL has the top spot, and even though it's not the second season that's on the list, Code Geass R2 is the only series I've followed as it aired that I watched three times per episode... one for every sub release (Chihiro/Nightspeed, gg, and Eclipse) because I was just that much of a fantard. And dammit if each rewatch wasn't still fun. I've also seen the second half of Gundam SEED an obscene number of times... SAC I like to catch sometimes when it reruns, but since I stopped watching TV altogether, that doesn't happen much anymore. Maybe SAC is the candidate for removal then...? If I swap out SAC, then I could add both Mushishi and Ouran, but there's gotta be other factors, right? And even if I do do that, which of the new listees should be ranked higher?

I always gravitate towards character-driven series, so maybe series with characters I like better should have preference. All the series on the current list have strong characters that I love, though it might be worth noting that there are no TTGL characters on my top ten favorite characters list (then again, I also have problems with the items on that list; that can be another discussion altogether, though it would probably be very redundant). Mushishi would be out if it's a question of character, not because Ginko is a weak character, but just because he's very simple and doesn't go through a lot of changes. It's a hard fight between Ouran, Planetes, and Nodame, but I'd probably also drop Ouran there. Great, so the series with the greater rewatch value are exactly opposite those with the stronger characters. Woe!

This entry has gone on long enough; I'll spare you the rest of my inner debate. But you understand my problem, right? I obviously haven't updated my favorites list yet. I really don't know when I'll be able to figure it out. Picking favorites really sucks; I love all of these series! But I can't very well not have any, can I? What would you think of me then??

5 Webcomics I Feel Like Recommending

2009-05-10T13:26:00.001-04:00

There are a ton of webcomics on the Internet. Most of them suck. Most of them never update when they're supposed to. Most of them get dropped whether officially or unofficially because their creators either decide that they don't have time anymore or life decides that they don't have time anymore for them. The latter bugs me the most, as I seem to have a knack for finding great webcomics that go on mysterious hiatuses as soon as I pick them up, but really, all three of those ailments are very annoying.

So here are five webcomics that 1) don't suck, 2) almost always update when they're supposed to, and 3) are currently running. There are also four runner-ups that occasionally fail to meet one of those requirements, usually the updating thing, but they're far from being dead.

5. Anime News Nina by Robin Sevakis

This is the Anime News Network's official webcomic and ventures to mock and satirize various aspects of otaku culture, usually in a good-natured way; after all, otaku are undoubtedly its intended audience. Occasionally, I do see things that some people might get upset over, but I doubt Sevakis ever intends the comic to be insulting towards the reasonable members of society. Each strip is can be standalone, but many strips also tie together in short story arcs.

The art is in full color and pretty simple, but Sevakis doesn't shy away from grand exaggerations of expression and action, which always results in chaos and hilarity. She also mimics styles from specific series to emphasize punch lines involving art. Good times. ANN updates every Wednesday with few exceptions.

Content: 4/5
Artwork: 4/5
Updates: 4/5

4. Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell

Gunnerkrigg Court, with little exception, will probably remind you initially of Harry Potter. This is thanks mostly to its British-style boarding school setting and magical inclinations, but that's really where the similarities end. As a continuing story, it starts off fairly whimsically and builds steadily towards a more involved, overarching plot that draws inspiration from an impressive number and range of world myths. The end of many chapters also include silly gag pages or informative explanations, and Siddell's one-liners that accompany every page are always amusing.

The full color art is unimpressive to begin with, but evolves significantly during the course of its run. Siddell ventures back and forth from very detailed scenes and very simple characters, but the style is unique and really grows on you after a couple of chapters. Gunnerkrigg Court updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and has never missed an update in the time I've been following it; in fact, Siddell reportedly works two or three months ahead of the current pages to ensure that he is never late even if he ends up sick or otherwise incapacitated for a few weeks. That's dedication, man.

Content: 4/5
Artwork: 4/5
Updates: 5/5

3. Today Nothing Happened by Shazzbaa

This is probably the least known comic on the entire list, including runner-ups. Shazzbaa is a friend of mine and will be graduating with her ~~Sequential Art~~ FUNNY BOOKS degree in three weeks. Today Nothing Happened is her journal comic, and as such, all events told are true and real and absolutely hilarious. You certainly don't need to know her to enjoy it, though you will find yourself knowing her better and better as you read through. Journal comics seem to be a big thing in the department as one of the professors loves and encourages them hardcore, but of all the ones I've read, TNH is my favorite, no contest. The life of an art kid! You know you want to read about it.

Shazz's art for TNH is black and white (with occasional color) and endearingly cartoony while maintaining wonderful likenesses of the real people she's depicting. If you read her comic before you meet her, you will be able to recognize her at your first meeting based on her caricatures alone. It's pretty awesome. TNH updates every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, and Shazz takes great pains to ensure that this is the case. Even if she isn't quite done with a comic at midnight, she will upload and post the unfinished page as filler until the final is done. Pretty impressive. What makes it even more impressive though, is that every update also comes with a new voting incentive for Top Webcomics, so you are, effectively, getting two comics per update, three times a week. Rock on.

Content: 4/5
Artwork: 4.5/5
Updates: 5/5

2. Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida
Sinfest just might be the longest running webcomic strips on the Internet. It is a daily strip and updates every, single, freakin' day. In the past, there have been a few stretches where he fails to update, but this hasn't happened again since I started reading it. Each strip is standalone, but Ishida often has week-long series or repeatative themes, very much like traditional newspaper strips, though its unlikely that Sinfest will ever grace the pages of a family newspaper. Sinfest is sacreligious and hilarious, but does not stop only to poke fun at Christianity. Devil worship and all manner of other beliefs and customs are also satirized every day. God is an asshole, but Jesus is a pretty nice guy. And since the 2008 election, Sinfest has also touched on various political subjects, but always in a humorous manner. Honestly, no matter what your religious and political beliefs, if you're open-minded to any degree, you can enjoy this comic.

Ishida's style is simple, clean, and very effective. Daily strips are black and white with the occasional tones; Sunday strips are huge and in color. Honestly, there's not much to say, but for a comedic strip, expressions are wildly important, and Ishida always makes them perfect.

Content: 4.5/5
Artwork: 4.5/5
Updates: 5/5

1. xkcd by Randall Munroe

This is my favorite webcomic. Period. As the site describes, xkcd is a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. That's a pretty wide range of nerdy topics, and thus, xkcd has covered everything from 4chan to raptors to nuclear physics to flying kites. The comic also consequently covers a lot of esoteric subjects, but the ex-computer science major in me is always happy when there programming and science-related things that I still understand and find hilarious. And they are always hilarious. If it isn't hilarious, then it's because you don't understand enough dammit. Each strip also features a tooltip caption (hover over the image for it); occasionally, this accompanying caption is more hilarious than the comic itself. The comics are generally standalone, but do feature a handful of reoccurring characters and the occasional multi-strip storyline.

I've gotten into a debate about this before, but I will stand by my opinion that Mr. Munroe draws the best damned stick figures I've ever seen. All the circle heads close and are nicely rounded and limbs are generally of reasonable sizes and proportions. The accessories he gives certain characters to tell them apart are consistent and easy to recognize. Everything is effective and has just enough detail that they are unquestionably what they are. Computers and TVs do not look identical. There are occasionally backgrounds. Mr. Munroe draws some damn sweet diagrams and maps too. The man can draw; he just chooses simplicity.

xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with occasional weeks where there's an update every weekday in a continuous story (like this past week). It has also never missed an update as long as I've followed it.

Content: 5/5
Artwork: 5/5
Updates: 5/5

Runner Up: A Softer World by Joey Comeau and Emily Horne
Content: 4/5
Artwork: 3.5/5
Updates: 5/5

Runner Up: Sin Titulo by Cameron Stewart
Content: 5/5
Artwork: 5/5
Updates: 3.5/5

Runner Up: Lackadaisy by Tracy Butler
Content: 5/5
Artwork: 5/5
Updates: 3/5

Runner Up: Evil Diva by Team Diva
Content: 4/5
Artwork: 4.5/5
Updates: 4.5/5

Viz Original Comics: A Question of Style

2009-05-09T12:33:00.006-04:00

Editors' Day is a small, annual event the Sequential Art department at SCAD puts on. Editors from various comic publishers came to discuss various topics and answer questions at a panel on Thursday, and then spent all day Friday reviewing portfolios from students. Discluding Dark Horse and Oni Press who were supposed to come but have rescheduled, this year we had representatives from Marvel, DC (and Vertigo), Slave Labor Graphics, Nickelodeon Magazine, and... Viz Media.
I was surprised that Viz ended coming after all. A few months back, a professor mentioned that Viz had canceled for Editors' Day, which was kind of expected considering the whole VP of Original Publishing leaving the company thing in February despite various announcements about Viz's upcoming original comics line last summer. The whole idea seemed like it was going to collapse, though I wouldn't really blame Viz for it, especially after all the controversy and criticism TOKYOPOP got the same summer for screwing over many of their original creators. The OEL bubble had always seemed like a precarious thing, but everyone agrees that the economy isn't helping.

But Viz showed up after all, represented by Eric Searleman, the senior editor that was working with Marc Weidenbaum (the aforementioned VP) on the original publishing line. So it seems that the venture hasn't quite died yet. It's worth noting though, that while Viz's website declares that they aren't accepting unsolicited submissions, they don't say that the original comics program is dead or on any kind of hiatus. It's also worth noting that several days after the announcement that Weidenbaum had left Viz, there was a post on Viz's official blog directed towards original creators, suggesting that they still had plans to accept submissions eventually, even if things might be significantly delayed with Weidenbaum's departure.

The panel discussion covered some pretty general topics, mostly aimed towards artists and writers trying to break into the industry. Mr. Searleman was relatively quiet compared to the rest of the lot, but seemed much more optimistic on subjects like the economy and pitching projects to companies. Some worthy tidbits include his mentioning that any project pitched to Viz should expect to go through heavy editorial input and that women seemed to represent a majority of those attracted to manga. The entire panel was supposedly recorded and should be featured on Monday's scheduled podcast at SEQALAB, if anyone's interested.

What interested me the most about the entire panel though was, and the belatedly-introduced, actual topic of this post is, a question someone asked at the end of the panel, in conjunction with something else Mr. Searleman said earlier. Is Viz specifically looking for projects in the "manga style"? Like some, I would would prefer "manga" to be a word synonymous with "comics," but the general population does not treat it as such, so it isn't so. But both the person who asked the question and Mr. Searleman seemed to agree that it doesn't really matter what style something is in as long as it can tell a good story, and Viz is out to "publish good stories." Presumably, this translates to, "No, Viz is not only specifically looking for manga-styled pitches," but I have to wonder if that's a good or bad thing, marketing-wise.

I have always disagreed with those who have labeled American artists drawing in a perceived anime/manga style to be wannabes or rip-offs. The only weakness comes when artists take no interest in studying reality and base all of their stylistic choices off of pre-existing ones. But that isn't an exclusively American (or otherwise non-Japanese) weakness. Young Japanese artists who surround themselves with manga undoubtedly go through the same steps -- they mimic what's around them. American artists who surround themselves with the same manga are really no different. Similarly, artists of whatever origin who surround themselves with Western comics will mimic the styles that they see and read and admire. If you label one set of them wannabes or rip-offs, you'll have to label all of them wannabes and rip-offs, but without them, there would never be a new generation of artists.

Nevertheless, most non-Japanese fans of manga still end up drawing quite a bit differently from Japanese natives, probably because it's impossible to ignore all of the other cultural influences around them, no matter how much they delve into the foreign media. So their styles don't get be to called straight up "manga," only "manga-styled" or "manga-influenced." I have mixed feelings about that since I don't consider "manga-styled" to be a very specific term. Astro Boy and Akira are both "manga-styled," but you'd never mistake one for the other. I guess the most significant thing though, is that you'd never mistake either for a non-Japanese-related comic. Everyone expects something when they hear "manga" or "manga-styled" or "OEL."

Or "Viz."

Viz publishes manga. If Viz is to finally venture into original comics, everyone will expect that they end up publishing "manga-styled" original comics.

Mr. Searleman said so himself, but as previously stated, he also mentioned being interested in any good story. I wonder what would happen if Viz actually published an original comic that was vastly, vastly different from what people would expect from "manga"? What if Viz published something that looked really American indie? Or even American superhero? It's easy to say that people will want to read anything that has a good story, but it's hard to deny that for comics -- art is a huge factor and always serves as the first impression. I would like to think that most people are drawn to manga for the stories more than the art, but it is always interesting to see just how big the divide sometimes is between manga fans and Western comic fans. If the stories are equally good, why the hate? Each side stereotypes the other. The stories on the other side aren't better, they say. The former only see the repetitive and continuously retconned superheros and the latter only see the androgynous gay boys and lolicon. Or something.

Viz is a powerful brand within the community; would people be confused or put off to see a Jack Kirby or even Adam Hughes-esque cover on something with Viz's label on the spine? Would they be shocked and appalled if Viz published a superhero story? A good superhero story, perhaps, but a superhero story all the same? Breaking down the barrier! Bridging and crossing the divide! Say it ain't so! Then again, Dark Horse publishes a good amount of both already, and almost all Western comic book publishers at this point have tapped into the "manga-style" in some way. Those announcements all seem to be met with derision and scorn, but I don't know a damn thing about the sales on say, the shounen Wolverine or freaky shoujo X-Men manga. Do these things actually work? Are people actually buying these titles because the art drew them to it? Or are all these companies' various marketing departments retarded?

If these adaptations are actually selling, would the reverse work? Would seeing an Western-style comic published by a manga publisher attract fans from the other side? Or would such a venture attract the same kind of derision and scorn?

Or is it all a moot point because no one that draws in such a Western style would approach Viz in the first place? Students had to sign up beforehand to meet with their editor of choice on Friday. Reading over the list, every name that I recognized was someone that had a decidedly "manga" style, myself included. Professors seem to like to say that the top reason project pitches are rejected is because the style of the pitch does not match the style of the company it's being pitched to. They tell us that Marvel would not look to hire someone with an indie style and that DC would not look to hire someone with a manga style. Those mantras may or may not be true (was all the X-Men manga pitched by an outside newbie?), but it might be enough to keep students away from companies that don't traditionally publish things in their style. The barriers have been breaking down, but it might not really matter when you're just breaking in.

It's Official! Pokémon Gold/Silver Remakes for DS!

2009-05-07T22:17:00.007-04:00

Finally~~!

Naturally, the Pokémon community exploded today with this much, much anticipated announcement. It's something that pretty much everyone knew was coming, but I guess I was always one of those cautiously optimistic ones. I don't like putting too much faith into things until they're official, and even then, sometimes announcements don't follow through. I probably should have known better though. After all, Pokémon is never going to die! So no worries! HeartGold and SoulSilver are now official! And it will have a lot of new/updated features and other awesome things that will make people want to buy it more than they already do!

It's like the anticipation for the original Gold/Silver all over again. The glorious nostalgia returns! I think keeping up hardcore with the news back then for G/S is one of the reasons I consider G/S my favorite generation and one of the reasons I have the fondest memories of my Silver game. Even though all the rumors didn't follow through in the end (no male/female choice for instance), there was just such a huge upgrade between the second generation and the first generation that it was hard to be disappointed.

I don't expect that things will be quite as drastic this time around, but consider this: the original G/S (and Crystal) were the only games that featured the lands of the previous generation. Can you imagine how amazing it would be if the remake featured all four major islands? Kanto, Jhoto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh, and probably a few extra feature islands too? I think all Pokéfans everywhere would just shit themselves with head-exploding happiness if that happened. Man, oh man. It's highly unlikely considering the complex map shenanigans they'd have to pull, but we can dream, right?

As of yet, we don't seem to have a projected release date or any hints towards what the newly added features might be, but I don't doubt it'll be fun following this news for the next however long it takes.

I absolutely cannot wait to have Totodile as my starter again, holy crap. You don't even know!

Another Live Action Death Note

2009-05-01T18:18:00.004-04:00

I was really hoping that this would be some kind of joke, but it apparently isn't.

There's already been a live action adaptation of Death Note. Two of them, in fact, since the story isn't easily told in one. I might be in the few as far as thinking that they were both fantastic movies and worked wonderfully as adaptations (I swear I'll get around to reviewing them both), but the fact remains that it's already been done, not to mention that L spinoff movie, which I've yet to see. All three of those movies have been licensed and released Stateside, so why do we need Hollywood to make another one?

Of course, Hollywood re-making Japanese (and other Asian) films is nothing new, and there are many instances where those re-makes are wildly popular and subsequently profitable. The Ring comes to mind, but I've seen neither that nor Ringu, from which it was based. Even so, there's at least one adaptation that I found to be successful (The Departed, based on a Hong Kong film). But Death Note is not a J-horror and Death Note is not an action drama. And from what I can understand, Warner Brothers will not be basing their movie off of the existing movies, so Death Note isn't even a movie.

Death Note is a superntural, psychological, suspense thriller manga, and I have little faith that a Hollywood adaptation will 1) make any money, 2) treat the source material right, 3) be a decent movie on any kind of level. Well, at least it isn't Fox, right?

There are just so many potential problems with this that I can't imagine enough of them being conquered for this to work. I might draw up a full list later if I feel like putting forth the energy to rant about it (if you want though, Gia's already got at least five ways they can fuck it up), but for now, here is the biggest issues I see:

Audience Appeal

As fans, we have become jaded. It's hard to ignore and forget this kind of abomination, as much as we'd all like to try. Some people say that fans are too critical and can never be pleased, and that might be true to a certain extent, but I like to think that there are actually a lot of people that are willing to give things a chance if given a reason to be positive. After all, I have hope in the upcoming Cowboy Bebop adaptation, and I'm also cautiously hopeful about that Akira adaptation. And it isn't just the live action medium since, as I've mentioned, I love both already existing live action adaptations for Death Note. I was also kind of fond of the Speed Racer movie, if only because it refused to take itself seriously -- that works for Speed Racer. It would never work for Death Note.

This might be a more minor thing, but it might be worth mentioning that some fans, while still fans, have gotten sick of the title's supreme oversaturation across all markets. I mean, the manga finished in 2006. In the three short years since then, there has already been two live action movies, one spinoff, and an anime. Now there's going to be yet another movie? Geez.

As far as the general audience goes though, is Death Note even the sort of story that would fly in the States? I think the supernatural element would be a huge turn-off both because straight-up monster-looking things aren't that popular in [serious] American movies and because CG becomes an issue. Ryuk's design and translation into CG was already an issue for the Japanese adaptations, but if it's anything less than amazing this time around, people won't go for it because they will compare it to stuff like Pirates of the Caribbean and I doubt Death Note will have the budget to compete with that.

I wonder if the whole capital punishment theme would cause a stir at all, and if so, would it be positive or negative as far as ticket sales go? Consider that so many schools took issue when Death Note-like notebooks made rounds in middle schools with kids' "enemies'" names scrawled in the pages -- would they be afraid of more stuff like that happening as a result of a domestic movie's release? It's also worth noting that The Boondock Saints was a movie that had a similar theme: it had a limited release and poor reviews, but has garnered a cult following since. Death Note already has a cult following, but the cult is hypercritical. Would WB's Death Note create a new sublegion of fans? People that knew nothing of Death Note before seeing that version?

Warner Bros. must realize how big of a gamble this is. Speed Racer tanked. Dragonball Evolution tanked phenomenally. If they can't help but do more manga/anime adaptations for some explicable reason, I have to wonder why someone doesn't pick up a few shoujo titles and have at some chick flicks -- why all these crazy shounen and supernatural stuff? Shoujo is, by nature, much, much more suitable for live action. The Japanese understand this -- there are tons of dramas and movies based off shoujo. But none by Hollywood.

Review: Kanpai!

2009-05-01T01:50:00.003-04:00

A month or two ago, BookCloseouts was having a $0.99 TOKYOPOP sale. Browsing through, there were a bunch of old, random titles I cared little about... along with Planetes vol. 1 and both volumes of Kanpai! The former was more of an impulse, but the latter was something I'd kindasorta wanted to check out for a while, but never wanted to put down the money for since I was half-certain that it would suck. I guess it's kind of sad that as much as I love Gravitation, I never had too much respect for Maki Murakami. Maybe it's because of her doujinshi. Maybe it's because of Gravitation EX. But yeah -- even though I liked the one-shot off which Kanpai! is based, I wasn't too inclined towards the title.

But come on, for ninety-nine cents? The whole order plus shipping cost less than a normally-priced TP manga. So here is a review.

I actually finished reading Kanpai! a few weeks ago but never got around to writing a review. I had to sit down and force myself to just do it tonight though since I'm bringing the two volumes with me to a departmental garage sale thing tomorrow -- if I'm lucky, I might actually profit a little from them, hahaha. Maybe I'll also be able to get rid of this copy of Catcher in the Rye.

Semi-Review: DOGS vol. 0 (Viz release)

2009-04-24T13:48:00.003-04:00

Finally! The announcement of the license came in July of last year, but DOGS finally officially released middle of last week (though a few people have reported seeing them in stores before then). I had had my preorder through HeavyInk, which has only served me well in the past, but I'm beginning to think that their strength is only in subscriptions and US trades, rather than licensed manga -- typical of a comic store, I guess. They seem to have had various complications/delays with my order, so I finally just canceled it and ordered through Amazon. It arrived within three days. Because they only included bubble packaging on one side, my cover was a little warped, but other than that: it's beautiful~.

I've updated my MAL review for DOGS to include some commentary about Viz's release, but I'm going to do an in-depth semi-review here because I feel like it.

PACKAGING & APPEARANCE -- Since I don't buy a lot of manga, this is actually the first Viz release that I've picked up since my old, old Gundam Wing manga -- all my others have been TOKYOPOP releases -- though I still plan to eventually pick up all of Death Note. The volume was actually shrink-wrapped and marked with explicit content, which surprised me until I opened it. The fold-out poster is this illustration on one side and this picture of Naoto on the other side. I forgot about all the nudity that's in this manga, apparently, probably because none of it ever feels gratitious. The manga itself feels very slick -- the DOGS logos and titles on the front and back covers, as well as the spine, are all shiny silver, and the graphic design on all sides is very clean and nice looking. The exception is the text that reads "Stray dogs howling through the dark" on the back; the font used is ill-fitting and kind of ugly, but that's pretty minor.

The print size is a bit larger than most tankoban, and I noticed the paper quality is a little lesser. The pages aren't as heavy and sturdy as I'm used to, and the volume itself is very flexible. I don't mind the larger format at all, but I'm confused as to why the paper quality changed. It can't be just a Viz thing since I've at least flipped through other Viz releases and never noticed a quality difference. I'm hesitant to call it a cost issue since this volume of DOGS is already quite a bit more expensive ($12.99) than other Viz releases ($7.99), so it isn't like they couldn't have offset printing costs on the larger size. It's not that big a deal really, but it was a noticable thing.

EDITNG & TRANSLATION -- As someone who doesn't speak the language, I can really only judge a translation by how natural it feels and much it makes sense. Having read scanlations is a decent basis for meaning, especially since the scanlator always made a point to make notes on the portions she wasn't sure of, but in the end, it's really just about whether the story comes across in a way that isn't confusing or choppy. I was, for the most part, really happy and impressed by Viz's translation. There were a lot of things that were actually made much clearer through this translation. The slang and dialogue localization was less extreme than what TOKYOPOP usually does (though story setting may have something to do with this), so the inevitable shift in character tones wasn't too jarring.

I was kind of confused about some of their choices in diction. For example, Badou once referred to cigarettes as "fags." It's all well and good meaning-wise, but fag in that usage is British slang, not American slang, and I don't imagine that too many people even know that. There was also a part where Badou declares "U. B. DESTROYED!" which was kind of awkward since I think "you be" would have fit in the bubble just fine? Badou also says "Oh shi--" at some point, but that's just awesome.

All of the sound effects in this release are edited and translated, which surprised me since I thought that sort of editing went out when everyone decided perserving the right-to-left reading format was the way to go. Still, compared to Viz's older works, the translated sound effects are much improved. They've gotten more creative with the onomatopoeias ("twip" and "zsh" in addition to your standard "bang" and "whap"), and most of the sound effects actually seem to make sense. The chosen fonts are kind of plain and uninspired at times, but they fit in okay, and I think I'm just biased because I find katakana to be infinitely more interesting to look at even though the "sound" effect part will be lost to me until I sit my ass down and memorize that alphabet.

The font and copy choices for the normal dalogue were pretty standard, though the font size changed a lot to accomodate the bubbles -- this always annoys me, but what can ya do. I always enjoy the out-of-bubble dialogue though (all those tiny comments made by chibi and background characters), and the translations for those were especially fun.

Last note here: Heine's name is offically Heine because that's a real German name. Some fans have been whining about this, and I understand that the change seems trivially annoying because the scanlations use "Haine," but seriously, come on. The romaji has always been transliterated to "Haine" because that's how it'd be pronounced in Japanese. For the transliteration to be "Heine," the katakana would need to be ヘイネ, which the Japanese would pronounce "Hay-nay" or "Heh-ee-nay" instead.

FINAL THOUGHTS -- I'm really happy with Viz's treatment of DOGS for the most part and really look forward to the release of Bullets&Carnage vol. 1 in August (and vol. 2 in December!) It's great to finally be able to hold one of Miwa's works in my hands, though I've come to notice a lot more anatomical mistakes in his art because of it, lol. (Check out Heine's left leg on the cover, serious!)

Review: Lovely Complex

2009-04-21T18:45:00.007-04:00

I still need to write reviews for Soul Eater and Gundam 00 S2, but I still don't feel like writing either. So instead, here is a review for the Lovely Complex anime, which I finished last night because it is adorable. Sickeningly adorable. The premise is exceedingly simple, the characters somewhat predictable, and the animation is all over the place, but damned if it isn't an extremely well done series despite all that. I really want to check out the manga and the live action movie now.

Baww, shoujo. Damn the genre for being so appropriate for adaptation into live action because there are so many series I want to check out now (still need to hunt down the Nodame Cantabile dramas). If the first NANA movie is any indication of how awesome these adaptations can be (granted, I haven't seen the anime nor read the manga in that case), then I'm pretty sure the Nodame and Love★Com are at least worth checking out.

I discovered whilst looking up some information for the review that most of the characters in Love★Com speak in a Kansai/Osaka dialect. What followed was a gigantic "no wonder!" kind of epiphany. I am simultaneously proud of and endlessly amused at the fact that I noticed something was off about the way they were speaking -- sure, it would be LOL OBVIOUS to someone with better knowledge of the language, but for a weeaboo, I'd say just noticing at all isn't bad. :P The easiest indications were the replacement of "aho" for "baka," which I also noticed in BECK way back when, and "na" for "ne." The second easiest was the substituion of "chau" for "chigau" because the dialect apparently likes to contract the hell out of everything (which makes a lot more sense than whatever the hell Shanghainese does to Mandarin!).

Purusing through this list, I spotted a good number of other things that I noticed, including "denna" for "desu ne" though I believe Seiko and a few others still used "desu ne." Actually, I also noticed that a lot of things on that list didn't actually show up. Otani definitely never used "wai" in place of "ore," and Risa never used "wate" in place of "watashi" or "atashi." I really love first person pronouns in Japanese (they're so much fun and can say so much about certain characters!), so I'd have probably noticed much faster if those had been swapped out. Also unmentioned on the list is "-chi" as an affectionate suffix, though I don't know that much about it either way -- why did they only use it for Nakao? And why did both Risa and Nobuko use it?

Fun times, Japanese. I should just get off my ass and learn it some day. I might be going there in December. Maybe that can be some motivation.

Photoshoot: Domo-kun VS Your Car

2009-04-15T16:54:00.003-04:00

Last week, various friends and I found ourselves at the local Target store for some explicable reason. There, amongst their shelves of Easter candy and cheap plushies, we found Domo-kun. Dressed with bunny ears or a chick outfit. Of course, Domo-kun had been licensed States-side for a while now; Nickelodeon has aired the shorts, and Target had a bunch of Domo-related merchandise around Halloween as well. I knew this, but since I apparently didn't hang out at Target in October, I didn't really see any of them out until now. So we crowded around the Domo-kuns and debated buying some for a bit. Three of us took one. They were all retardedly adorable.

But then, later on, while bumming through the toy aisles like the college students we are, we came across bigger Domo-kuns. Posable ones. Exactly three of them. And we all got one of those, in addition to the smaller ones we already had. Great.

Between my roommate and I, we had four Domos, and we brought them to our Environments class on Tuesday. A few of our classmates had 1:18 scale diecast model cars with them since we were using them for reference on our assignment, and in the twenty minutes or so before class actually started... this photoshoot commenced.

You only wished your car was this shiny, red Corvette.

I wish we could have used the white projector screen for a background, but it was too high up. :\

Bunny!Domo-kun wants first dibs.

After a few hours of harassing sports cars, the Domo-kuns hit up the Japanese restaurant three blocks down for some lunch.

The best iced tea in town. Domo-kuns approve!

And some delicious beef teriyaki too. いただきます！

On the way home, we found some interesting graffiti. (Okay, so it's actually been there a while, but I never got around to getting a picture.) Not sure why it's yellow. Someone pointed out that yellow and black were our school colors, to which I replied, "Oh. ... Oh yeah."

But wait! I got a package from a buddy this weekend. They contained some glasses. Leafeon contends that he's more gar than Domo-kun. What do you think?

俺を誰だと思ってやがる？？

Review: Dragonball Evolution

2009-04-12T22:18:00.002-04:00

You know, I almost didn't want to write this review because it meant I had to keep thinking about this movie, and all I want to do is forget that it exists. My immediate thoughts after viewing Dragonball Evolution were: "LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED." Sentiments haven't changed much since then, but I'm pleased to hear that it's bombing at the box office. I ~~hope~~ pray this means that they'll put to rest their undoubtedly terrible sequel/trilogy plans. Anyway... this review. It's obviously not going to be pretty, but I'm going to at least try and shelf some of the fan rage in favor of a coherent analysis. Try.

(this review contains no spoilers for neither the anime, manga nor movie... not that the latter has anything to do with the former two)

Dragonball Evolution

STORY & PACING - Honestly, I don't even know where to start. This movie is about a kid who has to fulfill some (lame) prophecy and save the world from an evil alien before the next solar eclipse. That already sounds pretty recycled and uninspired, but the worst of it all is that nothing is ever explained. Ever. Our main character Goku is a high school kid teased by his classmates for being different, but we never see how or why he's different. He just is. Why is this alien Piccolo here? Why is he hellbent on destroying the earth? How did he escape his previous imprisonment? Why is the deadline to stop him the solar eclipse? Beats me. Who is this henchwoman of his and why is she obeying him? No idea. It makes for a troublesome movie when your villains have absolutely no motivation to speak of.

And the protagonists' motivation? Goku wants revenge. Bulma wants fame. Yamcha wants money. Predictable, but it's kind of funny that those three "good guys" should have three of the most popular villain motives, and they act just as one-sided as stereotypical villains. Master Roshi and his saving the world bit seems wonderfully secondary to the others' primary motivations. Way to teach values to the kids, right? Except that there are those awful, inspirational one-liners repeated throughout the movie -- you know, the generic "believe in yourself" stuff, which might have been fine if they could deliever them convincingly, which they couldn't.

The pacing in this movie is also astonishingly bad, which makes it even more obvious just how absurdly weak the story is. I mean, I expected the movie to be bad, but I never expected it to be this bad. We jump from scene to scene with little or no transition; everything seems rushed and cobbled together. There's never a comfortable lull in the action where the viewer's allowed to gather his thoughts, so my impression is that they didn't want the viewer to stop and think too much; having time to think would make it too easy to tell that everything on screen is complete and utter trash. Because of the constant push for mindless action, I couldn't get a good sense of time. Has it been an hour or a day since the last scene? They mention early on that the solar eclipse is in x number of days, which gives a frame of reference for the film on the whole, but that still doesn't help the scene-to-scene pacing.

At times, I wasn't even sure how seriously I was supposed to be taking the movie. Some scenes could have been funny if you knew that they were just making fun of themselves, but the fact that you couldn't tell made it even more confusing. Some scenes were just so over-the-top and ridiculous that you'd think, "This has to be on purpose!" But that feeling of uncertainty remains and kills the humor completely. Some scenes reminded me of the 90's Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: they were campy, but didn't seem intentionally so, and just all around reminiscent of silly, children's action shows with gimmicky fights, familiar plot devices, and hilarious costuming. The sad part is, of course, that Power Rangers was superior.

Even before you start trying to compare it to the source material, there is nothing attractive about the story in this movie. Once you start the comparisons though, the disaster becomes markedly worse. There are very, very few similarities between DBE and Dragonball. Those that are there are mostly superficial things -- characters' names, the word "Dragonball," a trademark costume, and some portions of the character designs. The story is not recognizable. If you take away those names and Goku's bright orange gi, it could be billed as something completely different and no one would be wiser. The things they included for the fans' sake were pointless, really. Yeah, everyone made a fuss when initial photos of Piccolo showed him as not being green, but really? I would have much preferred they put some more effort into making the story not a piece of shit than bother with a fancier make-up job. Bulma had a few strands of blue hair and mentioned Capsule Corp in passing. Great. How about making her less generic of a character?

I think the main problem with Dragonball Evolution's story is that Fox didn't know who to aim the movie to, so they tried for everyone at once. All the generic plots were to tempt the mainstream audience, but it was way too much and the story just started looking like every laughable B-movie ever. Halfway through, they realized they were pissing off every existing Dragonball fan on the face of the planet and tried to tease in some actual references to their source material. By then though, it was too late and the story had been twisted so far out of recognition that the forced references to things like Namek, Oozaru, and Roshi's pervertedness just seemed out of place and stupid. And thus, DBE was born! And we even get a dumb reference to the name of the film in the crappy dialogue of the movie!

CHARACTER & ACTING - My kid brother could probably write a deeper, more rounded, and more relateable characters than any that appear in this film. They single out Goku as being "different" somehow, but how is anyone supposed to relate if they don't know what makes him different in the first place? Is it because he has no parents? Because he lives in the middle of no where? Because his name is weird? (Well, Chi Chi's is too, but she's popular!) Goku is adorably eighteen, but he faces bullies in school. Seriously? Where does this grade school bullying come from? Who in high school really faces these kinds of stereotypical bullies? All he wants is to be left alone and to get the girl! Once again, I can't imagine a further departure from Dragonball's Goku, but even without that comparison, there's nothing redeeming about the movie's character.

In some half-assed, roundabout way, I suppose the movie was trying to have a "coming of age" theme. As such, Goku would need to learn to accept and believe in himself before he could save the world. Dandy. But as much as the movie tried, I remained unconvinced that he had serious self-esteem issues to begin with. He was able to stand up to his bullies fine, and his progress with Chi Chi was only a matter of time. Where's the struggle here? As soon as he realized that Chi Chi was a "fighter" also and knew what ki was, there was very little self-doubt left, which made the climax of the movie very anticlimatic.

Goku also had a few endearing, manga-like traits sneak into the movie, such as his unquestioning devotion to his grandfather ("He said he'd tell me what happened to my parents when I turned eighteen!") and silly daydreaming, but those qualities clashed so much with his otherwise modern-day, typical high school student character that I kind of wish they'd just left them out completely, especially since Justin Chatwin completely failed to capture the child-like innocence and ignorance of Toriyama's Goku. Toriyama's Goku was cute stupid. DBE's Goku is just retarded stupid.

Goku was a flat character, but the rest of the cast was worse. Bulma, Chi Chi, and Mai were all gimmicky fillers for character archetypes. The techy ally, the girlfriend, the evil henchwoman. Yamcha was a completely useless character that served absolutely no purpose beyond becoming Bulma's five minute love interest. Master Roshi got to recite a prophecy, turn a monestary into a bed n' breakfast, and train Goku to paladin level in all of a week. All of these people were (bad) plot devices more than characters. Not to mention Piccolo, who has all of a dozen lines in the entire movie, no motivation, and no purpose beyond giving Goku an obstacle to overcome (except not really). All of the acting was sub par as well, though it might have been because all of the actors were so bewildered at the monstrosity they've signed on to play that they had no idea what to do.

It also bothers me immensely that the best derogatorive name that the bullies could come up with for Goku was "Geeko." /facepalm

MUSIC - I was too shocked and offended at how terrible the story and acting both were to really pay attention to the music, but I suppose it was about average. There were no lyrical inserts in the film, and if Ayumi Hamasaki's "Rule" played in the credits somewhere, I didn't stick around to hear it. As I said all along anyway, Ayu can't save a shitty movie all by herself. (And I feel sorry for her for having her music attached to such an abomination.)

ANIMATION & EFFECTS - I've seen better effects in Disney Channel and Sci-fi original movies. I'm not kidding. The dragonballs and ki blasts were shiny, but poorly integrated into every scene that featured them. They felt out of place and exceedingly silly. More and more, you just feel like the transition from manga and anime to live action was something that should have never been attempted in the first place. Even if the story wasn't terrible and the characters weren't uninteresting, things that work in other mediums don't always work with live action. Dragonball Evolution didn't work visually either. The Kamehameha can suddenly be used to light (and douse) candles and to bring back the dead, but it wasn't much to look at.

Matrix-style slow motion for fights just looked stupid and overdramatic. Bulma's Capsule Corp. vehicles were kind of interesting, but never focused on long enough to be relevant. Piccolo still looks like he walked onto the set for the wrong movie, but decided to stick around for shits and giggles. And he had a giant, floating can opener building with no explanation. Oozaru looked like he came out of a crappy 70's werewolf movie. Shenlong was a hilariously Western-looking dragon. That's just insulting.

OVERALL - Dragonball Evolution was the worst movie I'd seen in a long, long time (arguably the worst I've ever seen, but I can't be sure since I habitually block out all memory of other shitty movies I've seen), and I'm confident that I could make that claim even if I knew nothing about Toriyama's Dragonball. Fox's first mistake was deciding that Dragonball could be adapted in live action at all. Being a weird fusion of myth, sci-fi, and campy humor was fine for a comic and a cartoon, but live action as a format destroys many of the illusions we come to accept in the previous incarnations of the franchise. Ki blasts and green aliens just don't translate well.

Still, the fact that it was doomed from the beginning doesn't excuse Fox from the terrible product that just debuted at #8 in the States. It doesn't excuse the amateur writing, the poorly developed characters, or the horrendous special effects. (I am running out of synonyms for "terrible.") I just hope that a lesson is learned in all this. Some things just weren't meant to be adapted. Dragonball was one of them.

Zac Bertschy of ANN, in all his snarky glory, probably summed it up the best: "[T]his movie appeals to nobody. It was made for no one. People who aren't familiar with the Dragon Ball story at all will be so flabbergasted by what's happening that they will likely tell everyone they know that it's one of the worst movies they've ever seen. Fans who do know what the general story is will be furious at just how unbelievably badly they screwed this entire thing up. Kids are used to better writing than this in their weekday afternoon cartoons. It's a clunky, tiresome, badly executed, horribly written pile of shame that deserves no quarter."

Now. Let's just pretend this never happened.

FUNimations Puts Everything Everywhere

2009-04-11T18:37:00.007-04:00

Apparently, FUNimation announced at Sakura-Con that they'll begin streaming some of their videos on ANN. Earlier this month, they added a bunch of stuff to Veoh. There was also the recent announcement that they'd be adding a bunch of old TOEI properties to the their own video site and that they'd be adding a bunch of shows from their rival, Viz, to their broadcasting station. And of course, they already have a YouTube channel and Hulu channel with a ton of stuff on both. Oh, and their Playstation Store is now up too, the latest of their various Download-to-Own platforms (the others being their own site, Xbox Live, iTunes, and Amazon Unbox). I might have missed some. Is it just me or is this a bit much?

On one hand, I'm always happy to see FUNimation take the initive and find new ways to get their products to their fans and their customers. On the other hand, it's starting to feel kind of disorganized. Many of the titles are available across most of the streaming sources -- YouTube, Hulu, FUNimation Video, and now ANN -- but there still seem to be a number of series that are only available in one place or another; I think the FUNi video site has the most titles, which makes sense, but then I kind of wonder why they bother with everything else? Most video sites are pretty much the same to me; Hulu might have the best quality of the aforementioned, but I find myself using the FUNi site more than anything else because I perceive it to be more beneficial to them.

But they're obviously finding all of these partnerships worthwhile if they keep on adding more. It's curious to note then, that they're still absent from the Crunchyroll chaos. For the DTO stuff, it makes sense that they should spread out as not everyone has Xbox or Playstation or iTunes or use Amazon and all of them use DRM (correct me if I'm wrong; I don't use any of them). The DRM thing is another debate entirely, but as long as people have far, far too many options for DTO products, FUNimation doesn't have much of a choice but to go where their customers go, even if they have their own site for it (also DRM'd? Not sure). Is it the same for streaming video?

Some sites work better for some people, and some sites are available to people in different countries. There are dozens of quirks that set each site apart from the others, but the question remains... why? If we can assume that the FUNimation video site works for everyone in their intended audience, why would spread everything out? (And if we can't assume that, then FUNi should obviously be working to fix that.) Is their primary goal exposure or ad revenue from people bumming around the video sites? If the concern is exposure, why not place trailer videos on the other sites, directing everyone back to their own video site? If the concern is revenue, wouldn't they make more money when they don't need to deal with a contract and a middle man? Is that why they've avoided Crunchyroll?

Me, I'm obsessive-compulsive and want everything to be orderly. That's probably the main reason it's starting to bother me that FUNimation's putting everything everywhere, but hey, if this is what's most beneficial to them, then I guess that's that. On the whole, I hope that eventually this Internet streaming thing starts to simmer down and settle into the status quo and then maybe slowly, everything will become more organized.

Still Not Sure About This Fullmetal Reboot

2009-04-10T02:52:00.002-04:00

Finally saw the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood tonight. As I've mentioned, I wasn't that eager to see it, but then my RSS feeds started getting cluttered with other bloggers posting about it and I spent the week feeling a little impatient. It's always annoying having to avoid reading things 'cause you're not up-to-date, but I guess that's something I'll just have to deal with since I'm going to be adamant about supporting FUNimation's stream on this one. I'm actually pretty disappointed that so many people seem to have downloaded fansubs anyway since I think a vast majority of anibloggers reside in countries that are getting a simulcast in one form or another. (Sorry, Europe!)

That said, I was surprised to find that I had ton of issues getting the video to work right for the stream. I'd previously seen all of Ouran Host Club and some of Mushishi on FUNi's video site and never had any issues, so I'm not sure what was up -- the video wouldn't load at all in Firefox, so after several attempts, I took it into Chrome. There, it loaded... but very slowly. Like, absurdly slowly. It kept stopping to buffer, so I decided to just let it sit to load the whole thing before playing. It took like two hours to load the whole episode. Unbelievable. I'm sure there was a lot more traffic on the site than usual today, but still... I sure hope it isn't like this every week. :|

The video quality was great once it did load though. The subtitling is consistent with the other subs FUNi offers, and that's pretty damn good, I'd say. I would have liked to see a translation to the opening and ending themes, but that's not a huge deal. It did bug me a little that they used "sneaked" instead of "snuck" twice in the episode; even though the former is actually more correct than the latter, "snuck" has become so much more common these days. Oh, well. All words are created equal, but some are more equal than others!

Anyway, on to the actual content of the episode...

Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. I mean, I still haven't read any of the manga, so I still have nothing to be purist about and can't make constant comparisons between this new series and the source material. Still, this first episode felt... very choppy. It was entirely too obvious that the whole thing was set up to introduce a multitude of characters, concepts, and plots, and even without having read the manga, it felt very fillery and forced. I'd be curious to know if someone new to the franchise would have understood any of what was happening. Ed, Al, Mustang, Hughes, Armstrong, Hawkeye, and Bradley were all introduced in this episode, with last minute appearances by Lust and Gluttony, and it was a bit overwhelming. I'm sure there could have been a much better way to kick things off.

The episode plot was exceedingly predictable, and the Isaac character wasn't very interesting at all. I did like most of the other characterizations though. The great dynamic between Ed and Al seemed much more obvious in this version -- I was really happy to see Al help out a lot more in the fights, and the brothers' relationship felt well established even before they went into that obligatory flashback. The height joke felt a little out of place though, especially in an otherwise serious episode: they just did it one too many times, I guess.

Mustang isn't nearly as big an asshole to Ed in this reindition. His presence just seems more comical all around. The same could be said of both Hughes and Armstrong, really. Sure, they're more easygoing characters to begin with, but since they had been introduced separately in the previous anime, it was more obvious from the get-go that each had a more serious side to their character. I don't doubt that all three of them will eventually get the attention they deserve, and they were certainly all quite endearing in this episode, but it was still a little disappointing to see most of the military start off so gimmicky.

It's my understanding that the original anime kept up with the manga pretty well until about halfway through the series. If that's the case and I'm to assume that the story will be pretty much the same for the first half of FMA:B, then I guess the long-term plot setup for this episode was all right? We know that Ed and Al fucked up with alchemy and lost their bodies, and we know they're looking for the Philosopher's Stone. We know that the military did some shady stuff during the Isbalan War that the brothers are unaware of. We know that there are some characters hiding in the shadows pulling puppet strings of one sort or another. That's all the basics, right? What I didn't get was an impression of how this story is going to play out. The preview for the next episode seems to be entirely flashback, so I don't know what to expect next as far as the "current" timeline goes. Hohenheim being in the opening theme seems oddly suggestive, and considering how late he appeared in the previous series, I wonder if I should expect anything different this time.

Speaking of the opening theme though: it was awesome! YUI has a great voice and the song was very eerie. The tempo and general tone of the song felt very different as far as FMA goes, but I can see it fitting wonderfully if they keep a more serious mood for the series. The animation was great as well, and it worked at getting me more excited about the episode, however brief that feeling was. And the ending theme was pretty much the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Seriously. WHY SO CUTE. The style reminded me a lot of piggyhoho's work for her Chibi SEED Town project. The song was pretty awesome for the ending as well. :3

I've only seen one or two episode of the original series in Japanese -- not nearly enough to get a decent impression of the original voice cast -- so I can't really comment on the new voices either. Mustang sounded pretty good to me though, as did the brothers, Hughes, Armstrong, and everyone else. The animation quality for the episode itself seemed to go back and forth a lot; one thing that really stood out was the lighter outline they used on Ed's hair, which didn't look that great. It makes him look too blonde, which is kind of jarring. They also added in a few thought bubbles, likely to make the series more reminiscent of the manga, but it really felt unnecessary. I want to say that the animation in the original was better, but that might be an unfair assessment based on one episode. Plus, the fact that I watched the original series off a television broadcast and not an online stream is probably significant.

Overall, I feel incredibly neutral about this series thus far. I wasn't disappointed with the episode, but it failed to impress me. Even if it does get better though, I don't think much can be done to sway me from my skepticism about what lies beyond the point at which the manga stops.

Third Look at the Art of the DOGS OAV

2009-04-07T00:23:00.002-04:00

Okay. You know, now I'm just kind of confused.

We had our first look at the art of the DOGS OAV back in December. It was questionable, particularly for Badou and Haine's designs, but I decided to be optimistic. This optimism seemed to have paid off, as the short trailer that surfaced last month looked brilliant. There actually aren't many shots of Haine in the trailer, but Badou, at least, looked terrific. (Camoflague print is still missing from jacket, but I'll live.)

Now, some character sketches seem to have surfaced, and it looks like we took three steps forward just to take ten steps back?

Now, Mihai still looks great. His facial expressions and angles are great, and his outfit is pretty spot on as well. Naoto's turnarounds look fine, and her facial studies aren't half bad either, albeit a little generic-feeling. At first glance, Haine doesn't look terrible either: I love the boots in his turnarounds, and the top row of faces on his facial studies looks pretty good. What gets me are his eyes on second row -- especially on the left-most face. Also, that guy needs more forehead, man. The more I stare at it, the more I want to get into art kid super critique mode.

And Badou. God, look at Badou's face! He doesn't even look consistent from face to face on that design sheet! What is this freaky-eyed, long-faced monstrosity?

AHHHH!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

....

All kidding aside though, it's really weird to see these sheets, honestly. I've always known character design sheets for anime to be pretty spot-on with their animated counterparts, and these just throw me for a loop because I just rewatched the footage from the trailer and Badou still looks great! What's up with this nonsense? I almost feel like we're being trolled. In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter how shitty these sheets look as the actual animation remains as awesome as it was in the trailer. I find these character sheets kind of insulting to Miwa Shirow's art in general, but it isn't like we haven't seen huge style shifts from manga to anime before. It usually turns out okay, even if it's a little different.

I'm just kind of fearful of some random cheap crap showing up in the backgrounds:

That's what I immediately thought of when I saw that Badou. Do not want.

Updated for the Century: Dragonball Kai

2009-04-06T22:44:00.005-04:00

I just finished watching the first episode of Dragonball Kai with my roommate. It was very... strange. It was nostalgic in many ways, but somehow, it also felt like a completely new experience. Dragonball Z, along with Sailor Moon, was one of the first series that really propelled me into anime on the whole. It wasn't the first anime I'd seen or the first I'd loved (those would be My Neighbor Totoro and Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh), but I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have ever-sweet memories of coming home from school every day with Toonami to look forward to. I haven't rewatched DBZ since it ended its initial run on the block years and years ago, and I never did dig up the Japanese original to take a gander at either.

In reality, it really hasn't been that many years. DBZ's original dub run ended in April 2003. Six years. That's not that long... right?

Though I've never seen the Japanese version of DBZ, I have heard its opening theme, and it really struck me just how similar in style and mood the new opening is to the original. I think it's pretty amazing that they were able to do something like that -- the nostalgia factor is definitely there, but it's still a new song set to new animation, allowing for a new experience for everyone. The music is very energetic in that sweet, innocent kind of way: fun, but not that deep. The updates in animation are mostly apparent in the increased levels of shininess all around. It's a great improvement while still maintaining all the charm of the older animation style -- at the very least, no one is going to mistake this as a new series. It's a remastering for sure.

The first episode contains a fair bit of recap and flashback since it's only DBZ that's being remastered and not Dragon Ball. It's a good refresher though, especially since the beginnings of DBZ/K involve so many of the minor characters that don't really make it to the second half of the series. Hearing the original voice cast for the first time was kind of shocking, honestly. Bardock sounds like his balls never dropped, and Goku is similarly afflicted (among other reasons, perhaps this is why everyone is so shocked to find out that Goku has a kid? :P). For the former, that's just hilarious; for the latter, it's humorously appropriate. Of course, both characters are voiced by women (the same one, in fact), and women voicing men in anime isn't exactly a new or strange phenomenon, but considering how manly both characters are supposed to be, it's kind of jarring?

Everyone else sounds pretty awesome though. Bulma doesn't sound nearly as annoying in Japanese, and Gohan is actually kind of cute? (All of Toriyama's silly name puns are also five times more obvious now, haha.) I am kind of excited to know that there will be no dealing with Cartoon Network's censors this time around, so Roshi is free to be as perverted as he wants! The episode goes on to introduce both Raditz and Piccolo. Raditz feels so much more badass here -- his voice is much, much more manlier than his father and brother's, anyway. Meanwhile, Piccolo has been deemed weak and useless already, and I can already imagine the Internet's resounding cheers when we finally get to the "over 9000" part.

I don't remember how the first couple of episodes of the original DBZ went exactly, but the tempo of the series does feel much quicker. They'll be shrinking a 291-episode series into ~100 episodes; even with all the filler axed out, this is going to be some amazing compression job. Nothing in this first episode felt rushed though; on the contrary, it was a pretty relaxing and well-paced episode.

Overall, it was a pretty good time. I'm still kind of surprised at DBK's existence though. It's one thing to just remaster it digitally, but this is really more like an super upgrade than any simple remastering job though. DBK is renamed and re-airing in a different aspect ratio; it's in HD. The series itself is being re-cut to better fit Toriyama's manga, and it's getting new opening and end themes to boot. Compare that to a simple renewed edition like the Blu-ray of Akira or a freaky remake like whatever's happening to Fullmetal Alchemist (haven't watch it yet; holding out for FUNimation's official stream). I find it pretty interesting, too, that DBK feature's DBZ's original voice cast, but FMA doesn't. This is going to be a pretty fun run, but I'm glad DBZ/K is getting the treatment it's getting. I owe this series a lot, after all. I wonder if there's any US-made cartoon that's revered as much to even think about getting something like this.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to sitting down every week with my roommate to watch this, especially considering we first met seven or eight years ago, on the Internet, on a DBZ forum. ;D Oh, the memories!

FMA: Brotherhood to be Simulcast

2009-04-03T03:15:00.005-04:00

I probably shouldn't be as surprised as I am considering how much amazing progress this digital streaming and simulcast thing has seen in the last few months alone, but I am seriously applauding FUNimation for this move. Four days lag time between the Japanese broadcast and an official English sub (presumably) isn't quite simultaneous, but it's good enough for me. That's about how long I generally waited to watch my weekly Soul Eater anyway, so it's great to see FUNi stepping up like this and beating the fansubbers to the chase since they do already have the series licensed.

I'm really curious to see how many fansub groups this official stream deters. Since the stream is only available for those in the US and France, there will likely still be foreign language sub efforts. It's probably presumptious of me, but I feel at least a little confident in guessing that a significant portion of fansubbers and leechers reside in the US. I don't usually keep up with these things, so I'm not sure if any major fansub groups have already announced FMA:Brotherhood as a project, but if there have been, I wonder if any will drop it out right following this announcement.

Dattebayo dropping Naruto when Viz started its simulcast was a big deal. It's exciting to see FUNimation starting to do something similar with a new series -- especially FMA, which is already wildly popular in the States.

As for this series... I'm still kind of pessimistic about it; its very existence right now annoys me. Even though I'm a little relieved that it isn't a sequel after all, the fact that it's a remake doesn't help that much either. The bottom line I have to repeat is that the manga still isn't finished; why are you remaking the series now? If you're going to remake a series so it's more faithful to its source, why don't you wait until the source is actually complete so you aren't inevitably forced to start making stuff up like you did the first time? What's going to change in this remake? Seriously, what's going to change?

Haha, honestly, I think I'm now more excited about FUNimation's stream of the series than the series itself. There's been a lot of experimentating with the digital streaming, and it's been confusing because most companies will have a site stream in addition to a YouTube and Hulu channel. I actually really like FUNi's video site though, so I definitely look forward to having a completely legitmate way of watching this series as it airs. I almost wish FUNi had more ads on its video site -- I do want to support them, and if I can do it without actually buying anything (hey, we're all struggling, y'know?), then all the better. These are still experiments -- they are undoubtedly still messing around and seeing what works -- but I want them to succeed.

First Impressions: UTADA's This Is The One

2009-03-29T01:48:00.001-04:00

This Is The One
UTADA's 3rd English album
14th March, 2009
(Japanese release)

I was a bit skeptical about this album. I wasn't all that fond of Utada's previous English album, Exodus, because I found a lot of the lyrics to be really awkward ("You're easy breezy, and I'm Japanesey"?). In general, I'm much more fond of her older stuff than her newer stuff... I didn't like her most recent Japanese album, Heart Station, all that much either. I didn't listen to the "Come Back to Me" single when it came out, so I was walking into this album blind more or less. Here are my first impressions during my first run through of the album:

TRACK 01: On and On (YouTube it)
Very upbeat opening; I like the guys yelling in the background in addition to Utada's voice, which is gorgeous. Steady beat continues into main melody, and it's very energizing in that you-gotta-tap-your-feet-and-move-your-body kinda way. Awesome transition into the chorus via a sudden silence in the background, same with the transition into the second chorus. This song definitely has a very American feel to it, which I almost find surprising because I didn't think Exodus was very American at all. I really love all the layers of voices in this -- the guy in the background just keeps going and going, then there's Utada's voice, and at the bridge and end, there's a second layer of Utada's voice; it's a very nice combination of sounds. What a great way to start the album!

TRACK 02: Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - FYI
Loud, commanding piano intro followed by another steady beat and Utada's familiar "ah, ah, ah." Lyrics sound Japanese for a moment, but gets clearer very fast. The repetitive nature of the lyrics goes really well with the continued beat. The lyrics themselves are pretty interesting -- she uses a lot of modern elements such as "FYI" and mentions of mp3s. It's very characteristic of Utada in a way. Some of the piano in the bridge feels very Asian... it's kind of strange that mixed-culture elements seem to stand out so much in her music because it obviously makes sense. I mean, I find it less jarring when it's as obvious as singing in both Japanese and English in the same song, but when it's as subtle as the feel of the sounds, it's almost disconcerting. Final chorus is as upbeat as ever, but then returns to the piano, just a bit slower, and fades.

TRACK 03: Apple and Cinnamon (YouTube it)
More upbeat piano and steady back beat. Really like this minor key. Opening lyrics aren't very impressive, and the spacing of the words to fit the tempo feels a little forced... gets better though -- I really love Utada's lower notes; I think they sound much better than her higher notes, which are a little strained and airy. Chorus feels very mixed as far as the aesthetics of the sound. I like the repeated portions of the verses better; the flow feels more natural. Aw, man, I hate it when people sing with bad grammar: "I can't believe that you and me..." It's usually done for a rhyming reason, I know, but it always bothers me. I mean, if you can force "love" and "us" to rhyme, then surely you can find a way to use "I" instead of "me"...? That's the grammar nazi in me though. Bridge has some interesting buzzing... back to the chorus, and some weird, airy "ah"s before the end.

TRACK 04: Taking My Money Back (YouTube it)
Starts with a very pretty piano accompanied with some distortion, not as upbeat as the others. Voice starts kind of suddenly, but it's soothing and crisp. Lyrics seem startlingly familiar -- I feel like I've heard all these words before in other songs by other people. I suppose the theme and sentiment of the song is far from original, but it's still a little disappointing to hear that certain lines seem almost word-for-word from other things I've heard. I'm not particularly fond of Hikki's "ooh, ooh, ooh, I, I, I~" for the chorus, though that does set the sound of the song apart from other things it might remind me of. The piano and beats in the background are pretty consistent throughout, and it fades out at the end. It's not a terrible song, I just hope that the tired subject matter doesn't come back for the rest of the album; then again, perhaps it's this kind of subject matter that will sell her more albums in the States?

TRACK 05: This One (Crying Like a Child)
Beautiful guitar and soft drums for the intro. Whoa! Utada's voice sounds really different at the beginning and slowly works into a more familiar sound. Some really nice piano starts working its way in also. Chorus brings in a deeper backup voice, but I can't tell if it's her or someone else. Lyrics have a nice ring and beat to them -- subject is still a little on the cliche side, but much more passable -- and the feeling behind the voice sounds great. The melody is very refreshing... the more I hear the chorus, the more I think I like it. Outro brings back more of the pretty guitar, then end.

TRACK 06: Automatic Part II
Whoa, really awesome intro -- great bass beat and synth. Opening lyrics sound really strange and have a low echo. The background music remains good, but I'm really unsure about Utada's vocals here. It's particularly strange because the original Automatic is one of my favorite songs by her; to have it revisited now in such a manner is... disorienting? The lyrics being in English is strange enough, but the "yeah"s and "ah"s really throw me off too. It's a bit better if I try to forget the original; I mean, it's far from being a terrible song, and it isn't exactly just a remix. It feels very Utada, anyway.

TRACK 07: Dirty Desire
Vocals start immediately, very ominous, but then the main melody starts and the steady beat starts up. Lyrics flow very nicely... except... did she just say, "I love you long time"? Wow. I don't even know what to say to that. Chorus is very catchy; the beat is fun, and the song feels more American again. Hahaha, maybe part of it is just the subject matter though. Nice overlapping of voices for the chorus, full of Utada's standard "ah"s. Bridge has some interesting synth action along with the beat. Outro/bridge #2 sounds really weird; other voices come in and the melody kind of departs from the rest of the song. Then it fades and ends. Man, I have such mixed feelings about this song.

TRACK 08: Poppin'
Spy music intro? Then the beat starts with a round of back and forth "hey"s and some very high-pitched vocals that I'm not so fond of. There's a secondary vocal here that's decidedly not Utada (it's slightly British sounding?), but most of Utada's vocals are in the high register, which I just don't like listening to... so thin and airy. The background music really reminds me of this weird mix of spy and horror music... complete with howling wolves at some point. Bridge seems like it's from a different song almost, but then it's back to Utada's high vocals. And weird distortion. I do think this is my least favorite song thus far.

TRACK 09: Come Back to Me (YouTube it)
Dramatic piano opening, but then it goes to a completely different sound -- a very poppy, upbeat-but-sad kind of thing. Lyrics start out nice, but then she mentions "Photoshop[ping] all [her] bad memories," and I can't help but think that that's ridiculously corny. It's nice to see those modern references, but come on... Chorus is pretty though. Second verse's lyrics aren't terribly better, but there's no more Photoshop at least. Second chorus extension is all in that high voice, ugh, but the beat is catchy. Chorus lyrics are pretty cheesy too, actually, but the melody is just awesome... final chorus has some nice canon action going on too, and I am a sucker for canons. Some pretty "la, la, la, la"s at the end... then fade out.

TRACK 10: Me Muero
This sounds like oldschool arcade music to start with. Specifically, I suddenly got visions of Streets of Rage 2 on Sega Genesis, haha. Lyrics sound a little forced at first, but it's not that bad... there's some nicely placed whistling; the background music is pretty soothing and lounge-like. It's really weird hearing Utada trying to sound Latina though -- her accent seems to change with certain words. Most of the song seems like the chorus, haha, and this song feels a lot shorter than it actually is because of that.

TRACK 11: Come Back To Me (Seamus Haji & Paul Emanuel Radio Edit)
Starts off like a DDR intro... and moves into a DDR-like song! The heavy beat works really nicely with the lyrics though; it's a well done remix. I wouldn't mind dancing to this, anyway, though it's still a bit on the slow side. Hm, just realized that Utada goes from first to third to first person in the second verse -- kinda weird? Final chorus has a resurgence of energy and it speeds up. I'd really like to hear an ultra-fast version of this song now... maybe this last track will do it.

TRACK 12: Come Back To Me (Quentin Harris Radio Edit)
Well, it sounds faster! Kinda? Hm, nope, first verse seems about the same tempo as the previous mix. Some neat distortion and random noises in the back though -- is that a cow bell? I hear a cow bell. Still lovin' this chorus, but yeah, not as fast as I'd like to hear it. Bridge sounds pretty different; it's always good to hear more significant changes between remixes of a song (Utada did like a dozen remixes of Exodus '04, but most of them sounded the same).

OVERALL: I'm definitely much happier with this album than I was with Exodus. The overall sound of This Is The One feels much more connected and cohesive, and I think it has a much more accessible sound for an American audience. Many of the songs still have a peculiar Japanese feel to them, but I think the less obscure subject matter along with the strong pop sound will push it a bit further in the States compared to Exodus. The mixed format release schedule should also help a little. The physical US release won't have the two remix tracks at the end, which is fine, though I wonder why they also switched up the track order for the US release. They move "Come Back to Me" and "Me Muero" to the beginning and "On and On" to the end; the rest of the listing is the same. I guess it doesn't really matter though, this album doesn't really have any songs that lead into each other, so order isn't that big a deal.

But yeah, pretty good album here. A few nice songs, a few less attractive songs, but it's an altogether decent mix. I don't see Utada Hikaru breaking into the US mainstream anytime soon, but she's taking the right steps if that's her goal. Unfortunately, it might be that going for a more American sound will sacrifice some of her Japanese popularity. This Is The One is Hikki's first album to not top the Oricon weekly charts (it debuted at #3) since Precious -- her first album. Meanwhile, it's just broken the top 20 downloaded albums on iTunes.

Review: Antique Bakery

2009-03-28T01:53:00.003-04:00

I always pick up the most random series in the amidst of finals and such, and Antique Bakery was just one of those series, I guess. It was short and available, so I watched it. Now here is the finished review. I think it's going to be one of those very forgetful sort of series; honestly, it didn't leave much of an impression on me at all except that I think the Japanese pronunciation of "cake" is kind of hilarious. I'm also ever impressed with Mamoru Miyano's voice acting abilities. And lastly, screw what anyone else says, Antique Bakery isn't actually a shounen-ai series.

This is my first review on MAL since its review overhaul though, and I must say, I really, really miss that BBCode. I am still using my old review template, so I still wrote the review containing BBCode assuming that it would just be stripped out when I actually posted. Instead, MAL posts the review, code and all, forcing me to manually weed out what I'd put in. This made me realize just how much I do actually use italics to emphasize certain words so they're easier to read mentally.

I also still hate how jumbled the review looks without bolding to announce each subsection. I suppose I should just swap to "traditional" reviewing and write everything in that cohesive essay format, but I don't want to. :|

A Collector's Mindset and Why Pokémon Will Never Die

2009-03-22T22:08:00.006-04:00

Today was Pokémon Platinum's North American launch date. Platinum is the 12th of the regular Pokémon games and rounds off the 4th generation, so I wonder when we should expect to hear about either 5th generation game plans or 2nd generation remake plans. A lot of people think that Pokémon should just end already -- that they've milked the cash cow long enough and that no one wants more. Around when the 3rd generation was launching, I felt the same way, but now I'm kind of indifferent. Or really, in some way, I want to see just how long this franchise can keep its momentum, especially since it doesn't show many signs of even slowing.

More than a decade ago, when I was collecting the Pokémon TCG along with every other kid in the neighborhood, my father told me that these sorts of hobbies were just money-wasters and that Pokémon would be dead in five or ten years. The holographic Charizard that was going for $75+ on eBay wouldn't be worth a dime then. Well, it's been more than five or ten years later. That holographic Charizard still goes for about $10+ if you know who to sell to; all things considered, I'd say that's damn good. It's quite a bit more than a dime, at least. The first edition holo Charizard will still fetch you $75 at least, if not $100+. And as for Pokémon being dead? Ha! Sapporo just got a brand new Pokémon Center, and even in the US, Pokémon's presence in stores is being expanded once again. I don't think it's unlikely to think that the Nintendo World in Manhattan might actually be turned back into a Pokémon Center -- I mean, it isn't like they sell much else there anyway.

Satoshi Tajiri really did have a breakthrough idea when he came out with Pocket Monsters. Considering Japan's already rampant collector's attitude, creating a franchise based around collecting is just... genius. To some extent, maybe collecting runs in my blood -- being a huge pack rat also contributes -- but I think that everyone's got at least a little bit of collector's urge to them. Few things are as satisfying as having a completed collection, but each little piece along the way is a great milestone too. It's true even for things that might never be complete -- stamp collections, video game, manga, and DVD collections, whatever. And so, Pokémon has become very much the same. You will likely never "catch them all," but that doesn't make the games any less fun. It doesn't make you feel any less triumphant every time you hit the current monster cap.

Currently, that cap is 493. A lot of people are shocked when I tell them this because they stopped paying attention as soon as the number got bigger than 151. That's fine. Really, there's nothing wrong with having lost interest a long time ago, but I must say I'm a bit tired of people adamantly insisting that it should have stopped there. To them, I ask, why? Why should it have stopped?

From a business point of view, there is no reason to stop as long as the games keep selling, and they have kept selling. They have sold amazingly well again and again and again. Every successive generation of Pokémon has seen the two games at the top of sales charts for at least a month after release. The third game of each generation goes simiarly. My Gamestop manager friend told me today that Platinum was sold out by noon, not including the dozens of preorders that were also picked up. Pokémon's appeal has proven to transcend generation as well. My seven year-old brother (there's kind of a big age gap between us) loves Pokémon just as much as my other brother and I did ten years ago. And hell, I still love Pokémon. That's a different kind of generation-transcention. I have just as many friends now, if not more, that still love and actively play and collect Pokémon as I did a decade ago. This may just be because I have a nerdier circle of friends, but the fact remains. Pokémon has kept selling to new and old fans alike, so why should Nintendo stop?

From a fan and gamer's point of view, things are a little different, but the bottom line is mostly the same: the fans keep buying it. Obviously, this means they still want to play. I remember when all the rumors of the 2nd generation -- Gold and Silver -- were fresh on the Internet. (Oh, I love remembering the Internet of the 90's.) It was a huge. There were fake screenshots and outrageous speculations abound, but everyone was excited for it. Sites like PsyPoke and Pokémon Village were teeming with information and some of the most active fan communities on the web (is it sad that I remember these sites' names?). I don't think there was a single fan of the original game that wasn't piss-their-pants excited for G/S.

G/S did not disappoint, but there was a slightly longer lag between the 2nd and 3rd generation, as well as a platform jump. To be honest, I was excited for Ruby/Sapphire also and really wanted Sapphire for months and months after its launch. There were upgrades and updates that hadn't made it into the 2nd generation, and I was eager for more. I had just filled my Pokédex with the 251 (with some help from Gameshark for that Serebii), but I was eager for more. Unfortunately, as my parents were unwilling to invest in a new game system and as I was unable to get it on my own at the time, I lost interest in Pokémon for a few years. In that time, I suppose I got a little bitter towards the franchise -- I also thought a lot of the new additions to the lineup were retarded-looking. The games should just end because I can't play them anymore! But that was just me. Meanwhile, everyone up was eating it up all over again, game magazines and the ilk included. They all said that it was essentially the same game with fancier features, but dammit, it was still fun!

When FireRed/LeafGreen released, because I wasn't really paying attention anymore, I perceived it as a pure business greed. They're out of ideas, I thought, now they're just re-releasing old games! (Though money was probably indeed part of the equation, there is also the very logical explanation of wanting to have a way of getting first, and some second, generation Pokémon on the new Advance generation platform since R/S wasn't backwards-compatible.) When Diamond/Pearl released in 2007, I didn't have much of an idea what was going on anymore, but even then, whenever I heard about it in passing, I wanted to play it.

Long story short, I bought Pokémon Pearl that September and borrowed my friend's DS to play it on. For two weeks, I spent 3-6 hours a day playing it until I finished the active storyline and beat the Elite Four. It is still an amazingly fun game. Yes, a lot of the newer Pokémon designs are silly, but hey, there were a lot of stupid designs in the original if you think about it. (Seriously, Mr. Mime? Jynx? Racist Pokémon of the century! Golem? Muk? Exeggcute?) Some designs are just rehashed ideas, and I think that's my only quip with Pokémon at this point -- there are thousands and thousands of animal species in the world to base Pokémon off of, we do not need another Pikachu or Pidgey clone! Nevertheless, there are still a few gems: Rotom, especially Lawnmower!Rotom, is probably the coolest thing ever. XD

The interaction-centered gameplay is charming enough on its own, really, and a lot of people don't even pay attention to the "gotta collect 'em all" mantra, but those that do, like myself, really have fun with it. I felt good passing the 100 Pokémon caught mark; I felt good catching 200 of them. I felt good catching 300. Currently, I am just short of 400, but I'll probably feel good passing that too. It doesn't get old. I don't really know why. I suppose a lot of collectors lose interest after a while, no matter what they're collecting. But adding a hundred new targets every few years somehow does manage to keep Pokémon interesting. It's very simple. It's like the post office doing special releases of stamps every few months. It is the simplest tactic ever, but it works.

Pokémon isn't confined by its games either. There is an amazing among of Pokémon merchandise out there, especially in Japan, where they are still very much in love with their little critters. I really find it interesting just how much that country obsesses over all of its pop culture icons, not just Pokémon. Doraemon, Detective Conan, Hello Kitty, Gundam -- so many things retain worship-worthy statuses within their culture decade after decade. If there's only Japan to consider, it's easy to say that Pokémon will last forever, but that its still got International momentum, that's even more amazing.

Back to the merchandise though, the market for various Pokégoods is pretty incredible. According to Gin, its main maintainer, tens of thousands of dollars change hands on the Pokémon Collectors community on Livejournal every month. Collectors are from all over the world and the general mood is obsessive. Very obsessive. Most collectors like to focus on a few specific Pokémon. More ambitious ones will go after certain types. Since most Pokémon merch is sold only in Japan, and since many items are promo-only or otherwise retardedly hard to find online, its common for deputy services to be used. Collectors of Eeveelutions in particular face daunting prices for some very sought-after items. Says Gin, "[T]he person using brianjapan just paid about 220-240$ (after fees) for a one centimeter long [U]mbreon." Collecting Pokémon is SERIOUS BUSINESS, for real.

Collectors are crazy. I know because I'm one too. And that is why I also know that Pokémon is not going to die. Sure, there are collectors for almost every franchise in existence, but are they as widespread as they are for Pokémon? How many collectors of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles do you know? Of Evangelion? And what other franchise has the sheer volume of things to collect? It's hard to collect if there are only a few items available. But with almost five hundred Pokémon and at least a dozen pieces of merch for each of them (even the random, unpopular ones. I'm not kidding!), Pokémon will not die. Not as long as people are willing to catch them all over and over again and to shell out some thirty thousand yen for a tiny figurine. I don't mind anymore. As long as it's still fun, Nintendo can keep at it as long as they damn well please and it'll be all right with me. ♥ I, for one, would really love to see an Advance generation remake of Gold/Silver to go along with FireRed/LeafGreen.

In closing, I'll leave you with some of my collection, though honestly, it's very modest compared to most I know.

The bulk of my Lapras collection. I am missing a lot of plush releases of Lapras, but I'm working on it. :3

Below is every TCG card of Lapras except one (Misty's Lapras, Japanese-only card), including three versions of the card from the Fossil expansion (holo, first-edition holo, and first-edition non-holo). Also, some miscellaneous stuff likethat Lorelei card? Dunno, lol.

And here's where the collection actually sits on my shelf, along with my even more modest collections of the Totodile/Croconaw/Feraligatr evolution line and Ivysaur. Also: random other figures and crap I have.

Honestly, aside from the money issue, the only reason I don't have more toys right now is because of lack of shelf space. Poor Knuckles has to sit on the lower shelf along with that random Agumon and my DS.

And for good measure, here are my keys. Haha.

And awesomely enough? Just as I was wrapping up this post, my roommate walks in and hands me a copy of Pokémon Platinum, which I hadn't planned on getting because of time/money deficiency. I love my friends.

Review Scoring, Formatting and MAL

2009-03-17T22:57:00.008-04:00

About a month ago, MyAnimeList revised its review system (this thread seems to have been damaged in the recent server problems; curiously, Xinil has chosen not to repost or fix it as he had done several other affected threads. I had to dig out this link from my browser history. Clicking the "last" post link on the page doesn't work, though you can still manually navigate the thread up to page 8, after which it redirects you to page 1). This involved three major changes:

1) The hiding of the score breakdown for every review. Previously, every review on MAL showed not only the overall score, but the individual scores for story, character, animation, sound, and enjoyment. Reviews can still fill in the subscores... there's just no way for readers to see them. (Later, Xinil conceeded and re-added the subscores, though users have to go through an extra click to get to them.)

2) The removal of BBCode support for all reviews. Reviews can no longer contain any kind of BBCode, including basic things like bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough.

3) The relocation of reviews on profile pages. Reviews are now to be accessed at the top of each user's profile instead of from the side. Users can choose to favorite reviewers so that their newest reviews appear under a tab in their own profile.

A handful of people expressed their disapproval of change #3, but most of the dissenters were more concerned with changes #1 and #2, and I was among those ranks.

Xinil did not really provide an argument in favor of #1, but eventually conceded to user complaint and re-added the subscores. Honestly, in retrospect, I think the main reason I was upset at the removal of the subscores was just that they had always been there before. Updates to a site should not take away features that were there previously, especially if no one had ever had anything bad to say about them. Users didn't have to use the subscores, but they were there. Despite that Xinil had little to say on the matter though, there was a lot of debate over the feature between both reviewers and readers alike.

A lot of people seemed to believe that numbers were too impartial and that the less numbers a review had, the better. No numbers would encourage readers to actually read through the entire review to get the writer's opinion rather than only taking a quick glance at the provided numbers (and rating a review "helpful" or "not helpful" based solely on those numbers). Some readers said that they liked the numbers because it allowed them to quickly assess a writer's opinion -- writer's said that this just made them lazy. Other writers claimed that the numbers encouraged readers to read through the actual review if the numbers intrigued them -- for example, if the reviewer scored all aspects of a series high except for animation.

I write reviews. I write a lot of reviews, and I only occasionally read others' reviews. Still, I argued in favor of the numbers and the subscores. My reasoning was that there are some things that are just easier to emphasize with numbers. For example, I loved the animation and sound in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, but I abhored the character development and story. I expressed this in words, but it's probably just as effective for a reader to take a quick glance at my subscores and garner that information for himself: Story -- 5, Character -- 5, Animation -- 10, Sound -- 10. I will be the first to admit that I tend to write excruciatingly long reviews. Sure, it's nice if you actually read the whole thing, but I won't be offended if you're just looking for a quick, numerical summary.

A few readers also pointed out that they were afraid that reviews might contain spoilers, and thus it was safer to just glance over the scoring. With my own flaming hatred of spoilers, I make a point to never write spoilers in my reviews for MAL (except in the cases of sequel series, wherein I'll occasionally have spoilers for the parent series). I think most other reviews do the same, or at the very least, carefully mark where a spoiler might be. Still, it's not hard to sympathize with the cautious reader; it's true after all, numbers can't spoil the story for you, even if they might turn you off from it or get you overexcited.

So yes. I like my numbers, and I'm glad the subscores did eventually make it back. Now that the fight's over though, I come to realize this: I don't really use numbers for the reviews I write outside of MAL. For the live action movie and comic reviews that I write for this blog (because MAL is anime and manga only), I provide no numbers, only words. Lots and lots of words. I almost had numbers. I distinctly remember scoring the first NANA movie when I was reviewing it, but I ended up not posting them. I can't remember why, but because I'm obsessive compulsive and need to keep everything in the same format, every subsequent movie review was missing numbers.

So I guess I don't think numbers are so essential after all. I only ever assigned those numbers because the option was there. If it had never been there to begin with, it would have never bothered me. Reading a review, you get a pretty decent idea of someone's opinion, regardless of whether or not numbers are there to accompany the words. Numbers aren't essential, though they might be a cheating, kind of time saver for some. Besides, everyone's numbers seem to be different. It isn't uncommon for reviewers to have a page dedicated to explaining just what their numbers mean, especially in relation to one another. One person's 10 is not the same as another person's 10 because one person might give out 10's more frequently than others, lessening its "value." Of my reviews on MAL thus far, I've only given an overall score of 10 to two series (the Death Note manga and the Gurren Lagann anime). Most other people are less reserved with their praises, but that doesn't mean they're any more or less superior as a reviewer. We're just different people, and we review things differently.

And with subscores, the difference is even greater. Some reviewers average their subscores to create the overall score. Other reviewers, like me, assign an overall score independently of the other scores. For some series, I just feel as if some categories carry more weight than others. Sometimes, the enjoyment and charisma of a series just overrides the fact that it had shoddy animation and a cliche storyline. So I guess for readers who read reviews by a wide range of reviewers, numbers can mean very little. If you're unfamiliar with the particular reviewer, it can be hard to compare their scores with someone else's. Everyone's using a different scale, and that can't be very helpful at all.

In retrospect, I guess #1 wasn't really that big of a deal. I still like that we were able to compromise, and I still like that I can assign both an overall score and multiple subscores, but it wouldn't have been all that hard to just add those in myself at the end of every review if I really felt like it. It would have been annoying, but much more workable than #2...

Unfortunately, Xinil was much more adamant about keeping BBCode out of reviews. His position on the issue was:

I'm still set against bringing bbcode back. Newspapers, magazines, news websites...none of them use bold/italics. We don't need it.

I kind of find this to be bullshit. No one uses bold and italics? Are you serious? Font creation standards all but dictate the inclusion of a bold, italicized, and bold-italicized version of standard fonts. That is an obvious indication of their widespread use. In addition to that, newspapers and magazines have plenty of formatting via headers and margins, as well as images, to help break up the text. The tl;dr syndrome has only gotten worse with the age of the Internet, and thus, there is a need to minimalize giant walls of plaintext. If you want someone to read what you've written, you need to make it easy for them. This is why paragraphs were invented.

I've never seen anyone on MAL really abuse the use of BBCode in their reviews. Some people get a bit fancy with their tiered, multi-colored, and bullet point reviews, but all of those shenanigans are in an effort to make their opinions easier to understand -- organization isn't a crime. Myself, I like my bold and italics. They do their job: they emphasize things without having to result to CAPSLOCK, which is still "yelling" on the Internet. I'm also fond of the [url] tag because it allows me to link related reviews. It is beneficial to both me and the reader for me to link my review of the Death Note manga from my review of the Death Note anime. Similarly, I link reviews for spin-off series like SEED Supernova to their parent series because some aspects of the series, such as animation and sound, are shared between them. All right, so the linking isn't really kosher or necessary, but it's useful. At the very least, basic font formating like bold and italics should be left useable.

In the arguments for BBCode, there arose a discussion about the need to format reviews by blocking off sections for each subcategory. For this, citing professional news and review sources is actually applicable because it's true -- most reviews are just solid essays without any kind of partitions. Generally, for good reviews, all the subcategories would be covered at some point in the text anyway. Still, writing a review in sections appeals greatly to my OCD. If all the information is there regardless, does it really matter? Is there really such a huge difference between transitional phrases like "As for the characters..." and a header that declares "Characters"? The latter is easier to identify and read. Sectioning things off might make it easier for those that only want to know about a certain aspect of something. It also helps keep me, the writer, organized as well. Without those sections, it'd be much, much easier for me to ramble off in an incomprehensible mess... as if my writing wasn't rambly enough.

So here's to still wanting that BBCode back, at least in part. Unfortunately, now that the thread seems to be both hidden from the site and unusable anyway, there's no good platform on which to argue with Xinil. I'm not sure how much good logic would do him anyway; despite having asked for suggestions, he didn't seem very receptive to them. (Consider also that a majority of the legitimate threads in the Suggestions forum seem to never get a reply from him.) I dunno. Maybe it's not worth the drama.

For a little while after all the changes were made, I considered no longer using MAL as my review platform if compromises weren't made. That seemed needlessly dramatic though. I like MAL. I don't like these changes, but I still like MAL. It would be a lot of trouble for me to mirror all of my existing reviews on this blog too. I started and finished Antique Bakery on a random whim a few weeks ago, and it's sitting around on my backlog waiting to be reviewed. It'll be hard trying to find a way to emphasize things in my writing without italics, and I hate that my section headers no longer stand out for lack of bold, but... what can ya do? Oftentimes, I think I fret over this nonsense way, way too much.

DOGS OAV Trailer is Online!

2009-03-16T14:22:00.004-04:00

I got back from MomoCon late last night. Still completely exhausted, and it will take me a while to catch up with everything, but it's a good thing my LJ feeds are one of the first things I check back up on because it let me know that a trailer for the upcoming DOGS OAV is now up on its website! (Click the link that says "movie" near the bottom.)

The animation looks gorgeous and, for me at least, erases many of the doubts that came with the first look at the artwork a few months back. The character designs are very faithful, as are the backgrounds, and the action. The music reminds me a lot of Baccano!, which threw me off a little at first -- it's very energetic, upbeat, and kind of hookey, which clashes with some of DOGS's darker undertones. But considering that the OAV will only follow the storyline from "Stray dogs howling through the night" rather than Bullets&Carnage, the humorous energy isn't all that misplaced.

The trailer itself isn't a great indication of story, so those unfamiliar with the manga probably won't be impressed by much, though the action does looks nice. I'm really eager to see a trailer that will show more general background music and that will show speaking parts. I listened to the first drama CD again not long ago; it still sounded great, so I'm excited to see it all match up with their animated images. Gleeeee.

In the meantime, I've got "volume 0" of Viz's release of the DOGS manga on preorder and can't wait to get it~.

Fans and Artists: Conventions, Fanart, Profits

2009-03-11T23:35:00.005-04:00

The morality of fanart debate is something that comes up a lot in the community. Really, because of that alone, it isn't something I like talking about because every point has been brought up before and it's easy to find justifications and reasons for every side of the argument. But it's pretty much inevitable that I end up thinking about it from time to time, considering this absurd and haphazard major I'm in at the moment (I hesitate to say "career path"; I don't know what my career path is). I will be at MomoCon in Atlanta this weekend with a bunch of schoolmates. Many of us will be holding down tables in the Artist's Alley. Predictably, most of our merchandise features fanart.

I wonder why we do it.

Most replies will contain a list of things, but I find it a bit sad that the first response will almost always be "money." At the moment, I think it might be the first on my list too. Part of it has to do with the current economy. None of us have had any luck finding regular jobs this quarter. No one is hiring. What's the next best thing? Apparently hitting up the local cons and milking the weeaboos for all their worth. Or trying to, anyway. Because of various unfortunate conditions, I operated at a loss when I tabled at AWA this past September. Tabling at conventions is hard, even for the seasoned con-goers and artists. Most I talked to at AWA seemed to have had a pretty bad weekend in terms of sales and monetary profits. Barring certain controversial individuals, it's hard to say that any of them are only doing it for the money. That's the first argument in favor of fanart, right? No one's getting rich off this.

And yet, it really seems like some try. It really bothers me when people go around asking, "What kind of fandoms are in at the moment? What should I fanart?" It seems like cheating if you're not even involved in the community you want to profit off of. It definitely seems like cheating if you haven't even seen the series you end up drawing from. I really think that takes away from it and tarnishes fanart's "reputation" in general. It's called fanart for a reason, y'know? If you're not really a fan, why do you bother? Some say that it's just marketing, and that part of marketing is knowing that sometimes you'll have to draw things you don't like. But this isn't a job. No one is telling you to draw what you don't like -- just in it for the money? That seems almost like stepping on the toes of the companies that choose not to persecute us for borrowing their properties. Besides, marketing? What are you marketing? What kind of impression do you leave of yourself when you ask around for the current fandoms so you can try to profit off the associated fans?

For Otakon a year or two back, an artist I know took suggestions for fanart to make prints of. Among those she ended up with was Lelouch from Code Geass. I hadn't seen the series at the time, but even then, I didn't really take to the fanart she produced of him. It didn't feel like most of her other work, which I'm a big fan of. It didn't feel like her Bleach fanart (she's a huge Bleach fanatic), and it didn't feel like her Persona 4 fanart (same). Months later, when I finally saw (and loved) Code Geass, I went back to look at the picture she'd done. It looked terrible. With my newfound knowledge of the series, the art she'd produced looked ridiculously ill-fit. There was no love. It was obvious. I was actually really shocked at how obvious it was. Of course, this isn't always the case. Some artists can pull of beautiful fanart from series they don't know anything about, but the question is, should they? For the sake the fans who would want to buy it anyway?

I suppose companies, for the most part, see fanart as free promotion. It's really no loss to them since there is no official equivilent of fanart that sales of fanart are taking away from. All it usually takes to justify the legality (or lack thereof) of selling fanart is to cite that fact, so maybe I'm being too idealistic when I get bothered by artists selling things they don't love. I mean, I guess I've been guilty of it too (a pair of Naruto prints, but hey, at least I've seen/read the series? Silly self-justification?). Besides, as a friend points out -- this sort of thing happens in every industry. Except this isn't an industry. This is a niche community. Full of fans. Presumably. Yeah, customers are usually impartial -- who cares as long as it looks good? Wouldn't you feel awkward though, if a customer tried to strike up a conversation about a series featured on your table but that you know nothing about? And you, as a customer -- wouldn't you feel let down if your favorite artist fanarted your favorite series but somehow can't remember the name of the character on the button you just bought?

Besides, even if money happens to be first on your list at a given time, it should never be the only thing on the list.

There are obviously other reasons to sell fanart at conventions though. A lot of people say "exposure." Who are you trying to expose yourself to, and what do you want to gain from their attention? I find it interesting that many of the artists I saw at AWA had no personal website and a pretty minimal Internet presence in general. Having an occasionally-updated deviantART isn't good enough. If you're willing to invest the time and money in a table at a convention, if you're really serious about your artwork and promoting yourself, in this day and age, I consider a website to be cruicial. But maybe that's skewed by my heavy technophile background (ex-computer science major, represent?). If you aren't just selling fanart for the cash, then not working hard in other areas is pretty inexcusable. Trying to make a name for yourself? It'd help if we could pick up a business card and look you up later. It'd help if you had some original stuff you're trying to promote too.

Starting with fanart has led a lot of people into the industry they've long worked towards. Japan's doujinshi scene is the obvious example. What did CLAMP start off doing? What did Maki Murakami start off doing? There are a few OEL artists that can also cite fanart as their claim to fame, like Nina Matsumoto. It's possible, but really, just getting your art out there isn't enough. You need to have original things for people to look at after you fanart gets your attention. For this year's AWA, they've implemented a 50% fanart rule intended to encourage more original art -- only 50% of your merchandise can be fanart-based. Most artists accepted this without argument and many praised the decision, and yet, a huge argument/discussion/stink started in the AWA forums anyway. Some people, apparently, have no interest in doing original art. This bewilders me.

Still, as far as the promotion thing goes. I'm not really sure what I'd be trying to promote either. I've got my (lameass) website (that's in serious need of a remodel and major update), but I am ever webcomicless. My original characters float back and forth between standalone illustrations and school assignments, not fit for sale yet. Aside from money, what do I hope to gain from tabling at MomoCon? More watchers of my work? So that when I do eventually get off my ass and do something that warrants a fanbase, I'll have more of an audience to tap from? Except that I'm not really sure that's what I want my "career" to be, so maybe it's just insurance?

A third reason to table is networking. You can meet a lot of neat people at conventions, many of them sitting behind tables. I should talk to them sometime. That's how anyone gets hired for anything these days, right? You gotta know someone who knows someone who's in a position to hire you or to influence a person who can hire you. To that end though, anime conventions are infinitely more useless than comic conventions. FUNimation's PR guy probably can't do much for you, though I wouldn't say that he'd be completely useless to know. Same with Vic Mignogna. I've been told that attending comic book conventions is pretty much part of the job if you want to work in comics. I wouldn't say the same is true for the manga or OEL scene though because there just aren't as many editors or creative staff attention conventions (that OEL branches are getting slammed left and right now it seems, but that's another post altogether).

Even if you don't intend to work in comics or manga or whatever related fandom industry, I'm sure you could meet lots of interesting and useful people at conventions. Who knows, that guy dressed as Vash could be a creative director at some small business hiring freelancers. I guess if you don't attend many other social events, an anime con is as good a place as any to meet people, and sitting behind a table full of art invites people to ask you about it, right? Maybe that's what I convince myself I'm doing this for because sometimes, I really do lose sight of it all. The money helps, but it isn't everything. I've got nothing I'm proud of enough to promote. So networking, right? That's a kind of profit too. Maybe then I'll actually have a job when I graduate.

Just Say "No" to a Watchmen Pre/Sequel

2009-03-09T15:33:00.006-04:00

I swear this will be my last Watchmen-related post, ahaha...

Even before I went to see the movie on Friday, I had heard the blasphemous whispers of a sequel. Or at least, I had heard that Zack Snyder is refusing to have anything to do with one, which is certainly reassuring. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but notice Dr. Manhattan's ominous line, "Nothing ever ends." It seemed like it had less to do with his concept of time and more to do with Hollywood's tendency to milk everything for all its worth. Except that a second Watchmen movie wouldn't fly, even for non-fans. Seriously, what would you do? Just about everyone involved in the film is confused on that front. Who would want a sequel? Or even a prequel?

This article is pretty hilarious and this excerpt and quote sums up everything I have to say on the matter:

While a possible prequel about the Minutemen — the superhero team that came before the Watchmen — may make financial sense, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays seasoned "Watchmen" superhero The Comedian, says it would be creative suicide.

"The fans would kill us if we tried to go and do something else," Morgan said. "If we tried to do a prequel that wasn't written by Alan Moore, we'd get crucified. We couldn't walk down the street. Unless Warner Bros. wants all of their actors to get killed, I think it's a bad idea."

And Alan Moore would never write a sequel, especially not if the entire purpose is so that a second movie could be crafted from it.

There are a lot of movies that should have never had sequels. Among them, the Matrix, Short Circuit, the Wizard of Oz (yes, that had a sequel; I know, right?), and most Disney movies. Watchmen begins and ends. They're already releasing the cut material from Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood as DVD features, so there's nothing more to say or do. Really, I think chances of a second movie getting greenlit is slim to none, but it's still unsettling to know that the actors have a clause in their contract binding them to a potential sequel/prequel, which means that Hollywood, at the very least, thought about it at some point.

Review: Watchmen (movie)

2009-03-09T11:01:00.009-04:00

I'm not really sure this should be considered a review. I cover the basics, I guess, but it's more like me rambling in an semi-organized manner about the movie and the book and describing which of the changes I liked and which I didn't. As such, this is your spoiler warning:

(this review contains spoilers for both the book and the movie!)

(Hey, this poster looks kinda familiar...)

Watchmen

STORY & PACING - Most of the story was intact. Indeed, people will point out that many sequences were filmed panel for panel and that there were large chunks of dialogue lifted directly from the comic. This might bother those that believe the film should be an adaptation and that it isn't an adaptation if it's taken panel for panel, but it made me happy. Mostly. Unfortunately, the exactness of some of the scenes also made it really obvious when something was changed, however slightly. Sometimes the small deviations made sense, but sometimes, they were just so trivial that I had to wonder why they didn't just stick to what had been written. It's too noticeable when you follow something almost exactly.

One scene that sticks out to me in particular is when Rorschach visited Osterman and Juspeczyk following his visit to Dreiberg near the beginning of the movie -- the conversation was a lot longer in the book and touched on the Comedian's attempted rape of Juspeczyk's mother, so Rorshach being subsequently expelled from the lab made sense. In the movie, it seemed more like Osterman getting impatient, which doesn't fit as well, and since Rorshach never gets to mention Dreiberg at all, they reworked it to Osterman suggesting Juspeczyk go see him, which doesn't make much sense either, even if they tried to use it to touch on his simultaneous time-seeing abilities. It's the little things. Also, I'm probably the only anal retentive idiot who is slightly annoyed at the fact that Rorshach's opening lines did not include the "look down" part and was therefore not word for word.

The biggest cut from the story was everything involving the newspaper vendor, the freeloading kid, and Tales of the Black Freighter, but that was pretty predictable. I've heard various things about the pirate side story being released with the DVD, and actually, in the commercials/previews before the showing, there was an ad for an animated version of Tales of the Black Freighter to be released on its own? Not sure. In any case, Bernie and Bernie still make various cameo appearances throughout the film, so it wasn't like they were axed completely.

The biggest change was obviously the ending. I would not have had a problem if they replaced the alien with a nondescripit explosion of undeteremined cause, but I was kind of puzzled as to why they decided to frame Dr. Manhattan. I mean, the guy's already left the planet with no intentions to return, so it's kind of pointless to pin it on him -- if the threat has left the planet, hell, the galaxy, why should the peace last? Maybe they don't know where he's gone, but eh... I dunno. It just seemed pointless to me. They could have just left it as an explosion and the world could freak out not knowing where it had come from. The only plus of blaming Manhattan is the explanation of how Veidt got the technology to do what he did without kidnapping random scientists, but I don't feel as if that subplot would have been hard to work into the movie (I'm actually a bit disappointed the New Frontiersman didn't play a very prominent role at all since that'd have made Rorschach's decision to send them his journal less random).

Also, I didn't like that Dreiberg witnessed Rorshach's death at the end. His scream was really weird and unnatural feeling, and his beating up on Veidt afterwards just seemed forced. I think part of the reason I didn't like it was just because I'm too used to anime pandering to the fujoshi crowd and just couldn't unsee the slash potential of Rorshach/Nite Owl II that resulted from that scene, and that is just so many kinds of do not want. =_= The "you're a good friend" scene was fine, but that final angst just pushed it over the line for me. I dunno. Dreiberg should have been off banging his girl again, not watching his buddy get blown up. That said though, Rorshach obviously had the coolest blood splatter ever.

Other random things: so, how about that sex scene, huh? Honestly, I didn't have many qualms about it other than the fact that it went on for way too long. Seriously did not need that latter half with the awkward thrusting. That was just. Yeah. But other than that? The Hallelujah Chorus and flames in the sky? Sure, whatever, man. The theatre had a great time laughing it up so it was all good. Oh, and Rorshach's backstory. I think the only reason they changed it was because they didn't want to seem like they were ripping off Saw with the limb-cutting thing when clearly it's the other way around. I don't dislike what they did, but they made it seem like Rorshach just lost it then when I feel like it was a more subtle change than that. The fire was slower-acting and put him in a position to contemplate what he'd done more than just hacking the guy's head open.

I didn't like that they made "Watchmen" the name of the second generation superhero group. Sure, it's infinitely better than "Crimebusters," as it was originally, but it takes away from the ambiguity of the title, which could be a reference to a number of things, from the Doomsday clock to a quote from Einstein. It's one of those changes that makes perfect sense but doesn't sit well all the same. Don't you hate no-win situations?

Changes aside though, I wasn't all that fond of the pacing in the movie. It seemed really choppy, especially when we were bouncing back and forth between characters. I never really got a sense that anyone was the "main" character, which is fine I guess, but that made it harder to focus. It was a lot of character and story elements strung together -- I didn't get a very good sense of time passing, which was odd as well. The whole movie could have taken place in two days, but it really should have been more like two weeks. A lot of the logic didn't follow very clearly for me either. Like, why did Dreiberg decide he wanted to spring Rorshach from prison? Not sure. Juspeczyk's whole parental subplot? Didn't feel relevant at all, and honestly, it felt kind of misplaced when it finally dawned on her.

Hum, seems like my disjointed rambling is already leading into the character section, so let's go there. D;

CHARACTER & ACTING - First off, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach was mindblowingly perfect. His voice, his face, everything about him was spot on. I think his face freaks me out the most because of how much it fits even though Walter Kovacs was probably supposed to be quite a bit uglier than Haley. The acting and characterization was fantastic though, and I'm really not even sure how to express how happy I am that Rorshach translated so damn well into live action. I really appreciate that Haley is also a fan of the book and worked hard to get a convincing portrayal down. The black and white nature of his character was clear. I did feel like he was a bit more emotional in the film -- there was more feeling in his voice than I'd have expected when he told Dreiberg "[he] quit" and he almost looked/sounded like he was pleading in that last scene with Manhattan. That was fine though, as the point of his character wasn't lost. Nevertheless, I do wish they could have incorporated more of his backstory and daily life -- I don't feel they were that effective in capturing his philosphies and moral views, and I did not get the impression that there was a stark difference between Rorshach and Walter Kovacs despite various scenes hinting at such. I guess I can understand the cuts to the psychologist scenes; after all, it isn't Rorshach's movie, but it was still a little disappointing.

Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg was also pretty good. As far as acting goes, his awkwardness and sincerity was well done, but sometimes his interactions with the other characters felt forced. The characterization also didn't feel very solid or in-depth, but that's more a matter of script than acting. I didn't get as much a sense of his past with Rorshach, and the progression of his relationship with Juspeczyk felt rushed because the pacing of the movie in general felt rushed. I also didn't get a very clear sense of his inner conflict with superheros and vigilantism, partially because I don't think anything involving the Keene Act was well explained. The flashbacks and such dealing with the police strike felt jumbled and focused more on the Comedian as a character than the moral questions surrounding the subject. So in the end, I guess this made Dan a pretty flat character, which really is a shame because the acting wasn't bad.

Speaking of the Comedian, I didn't like the opening of the movie. I didn't like that we caught that glimpse of him while he was still alive when he's otherwise portrayed entirely through flashbacks. Honestly, I think that opening bit was more of a bone tossed at the fanboys than anything substiantial storywise -- it was a good place to sneak in references to Nostalgia and other things that I can't seem to remember right now, but we had that later montage where there were references up the wazoo anyway, so it's even more pointless that way. Rather than spend those ten minutes watching the Comedian die, I would have preferred they be invested in better developing one of the other characters. Eddie Blake wasn't badly characterized though. Every bit of him we saw in the film was pretty much taken straight from the comics, so it felt pretty solid. I think his scene with the pregnant woman in Vietnam would have been better if it had stuck more precisely with the book, but that might just be another on the long list of things that stood out because they were done almost exactly.

Malin Akerman was an okay Laurie Juspeczyk. I have to say that I never really liked the character to begin with though, even in the comic, and it seemed like all of her imperfections were more obvious in the movie. As I said before, her entire subplot with her parents seemed frustratingly irrelevant, though this could partially be blamed on Jon Osterman's poor film characterization. Her conflict with her mother and the fact that she had been raised into vigilantism was not very clear (her mother's acting and characterzation was great, however). Her relationship with Osterman seemed contrived at best, and the time (or lack thereof) it took for her to come onto Dreiberg just makes her seem like a slut. I'm just a huge misogynist though... I guess it doesn't help that the only important thing she seems to do in the entire movie is motivate Dreiberg to put on his costume again (and sleep with him).

Billy Crudup really looked the part for Dr. Manhattan, but his character was exceedingly difficult to grasp in the movie. I think part of this is because the format of his lengthy flashbacks on Mars just wasn't as effective as it was in the comic. The lack of narration made it harder to understand that he perceives all time simultaneously, so you couldn't really understand that he had been growing more and more distant from humanity because of that ability. The impact of his relationship with Janey Slater didn't resonate very well; as a result, his relationship with Juspeczyk didn't hold too great either. Thus, Osterman just comes off as a cold and distant character -- since his feelings for Juspeczyk felt contrived, his "sudden" appreciation of humanity near the end of the movie didn't really connect. Actually, this bothered me in the book too. He "saves" the world by deciding not to do anything about Veidt's plan, kills Rorshach to ensure that no one else does, but then he jumps ship and leaves the galaxy? Just because Juspeczyk leaves him? Humanity has to mean more to you than just one relationship, right?

And finally... Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt. Am I the only one who thought that he had neon flashing lights over his head proclaiming "LOOK AT ME~! I'M THE VILLAIN~!" from the minute he was introduced? Just everything about him seemed to scream stereotypical supervillain, from the slight accent to the arrogant demeanor. I consider Watchmen's storyline to be a mystery at its core -- this doesn't work if the "bad guy" is obvious from the second he walks in. I was completely fooled by Veidt in the comic, so what the hell happened?? This is my single biggest gripe with the entire movie. Veidt came off as a much more playful, and even naive, character in the book ~~(his sad little "My display..." comment after the Comedian burns his chart thing in that flashback sticks out in my head)~~; his obsession with Alexander the Great and Egyptian myth wasn't obvious at all and was not explained until the very end. The worst of it was that they chose to have him ramble about his idols and motivation right before the attempt on his life. They alienate his character and pretty much confirm him as a villain right before the attempt to remove him as a suspect. Yeah, that totally works. -_-

All of the minor characters in the movie were pretty great though. Rorshach's shrink, Hollis Mason, Sally Jupiter, Moloch (even though I think the pointed ears could have been left out) were all spot on. I really do think they did a brilliant casting job -- most of what's missing in characterization is due more to cuts in the script than anything else. I always feel like they could have invested more in developing all the characters properly rather than spending the time on decidedly less important things such as the intro with the Comedian and the sex scene, but I also know that to the general population, especially those who have not read the comic, shiny things are better than deep things. So what can ya do.

One thing though, my roommate and I both swear we saw Patrick Stewart as one of the generals in the war room with President Nixon (sitting on the far-left in many of the shots). His name wasn't in the credits, not does it seem to be mentioned anywhere else, but we SWEAR it was him. Anyone else spot him or are we just crazy?

ART & ANIMATION - Rorshach's face was amazing. Dr. Manhattan also looked pretty good, and I appreciated that they didn't try to censor his occasional full blown nudity. The doc exploding people was also nice looking. Other than that though... a lot of the movie looked too shiny to me for some reason. It felt too modern. I had a hard time remembering that it's 1985. I think that's more due to the format of the film than anything else though -- the shiny things on Mars didn't help either. There were a lot of hints towards the era; I just had a hard time picking them up because 1) my historical sense is terrible, and 2) everything was still so shiny! Is it unfair of me to say that things were just too well-animated? The Comedian being thrown out the window in slow motion was just too sophisticated. I wanted nitty gritty. It's a dirty, oldschool crimescene; I didn't want the fancy schmancy effects.

The explosion at the end was also a little disappointing. It felt too overdramatic and staged, which is weird because it should have been dramatic, just not staged. Maybe they'd overspent their budget on Dr. Manhattan by that point. I didn't get a very good sense of just how much devastation there was either -- there was no shot of the mountain of dead bodies tumbling out of the Garden afterwards. Even the newscasts didn't seem to emphasize that millions of people died. It felt weird, but it's still a good-looking movie, maybe just too good.

Oh, wait. I forgot to talk about Bubastis. Bubastis looked cheap. Didn't blend with the scenery at all, and just wasn't very convincing in general. Really, I wish they had just left her out altogether because without the genetic experimentation angle on Veidt's plot, she just seemed like a misplaced character. All she did was make Veidt seem even more like a stereotypical supervillain. All the bad guys seem to like to have their little kitty pet. (It's always a cat. Why always a cat?) The fact that Veidt was lacking in all his rambling monologue didn't help either because the audience didn't get a chance to appreciate Bubastis before her death. It's very sad.

MUSIC - My first thought was that there was way too much in the way of vocal background music in this movie. My roommate pointed out that a lot of it helped put us in the time period -- pieces like Nena's "99luftballoons" and Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" (okay, maybe that one's a bit old). I guess that's true, though I suck at pop culture and can't place these things very well anyway. "Hallelujah" was just exceptionally corny, which is okay, except that they went for corny twice. They'd already used "Rise of the Valkyries." I did like most of the music choices; it just seemed excessive after a while. The soundtrack itself was pretty neat, though I'd probably need to watch the movie again to get a better opinion.

OVERALL - Hell, I want to see the entire movie again to get a better opinion in general. I already can't remember a lot of specific scenes, and that really bugs me. I think this "review" sounds a lot more negative than I want it to -- it's always easier to talk about the poorer aspects of something because praising the good parts just feels like finding all the synonyms of "awesome" that exist and spewing them together onto the page. I liked this movie. There are some things about it that I would change if it were up to me, but really? It was a solid enough film; it was fun and entertaining. Some of the changes/additions were pretty neat too (I loved Rorshach's "It's your turn, doc: what do you see?"). It's true that some of the deeper questions that spawned from the book are missing, but the general idea is still there. It still poses the same moral question at the end.

I would probably recommend it to fans of the book as long as they're willing to accept that changes will always exist. I'm not really sure what to say to non-fans though. I've yet to hear many opinions from people who've never read the comic. I did say that I felt the pacing was a bit confusing, so maybe the non-fan would be too confused to grasp the core themes. In that sense, it's a shame, and maybe the movie didn't really succeed, but for the fan, it's still a nice treat to be able to see everything in live action.

Review: Watchmen (comic)

2009-03-05T21:39:00.003-05:00

This was something that has been on my to-read list for years. One of my professors assigned it as required reading last quarter, but we never ended up discussing it, so I never got around to finishing it. I was determined to finish it before the movie's release though and thus finally sat down and marathoned through it in five hours on Tuesday. Now I can finally look forward to the movie tomorrow (not seeing it at midnight). I hear there have been a lot of mixed reviews going around, but I don't really want to read any of them until I've seen it. I'm not really worried, honestly. The trailers look great, though I'm kind of on the fence about the special effects. Despite that, I don't think I'm expecting a whole lot from it, so hopefully my purist neuroticism won't strike too badly.

We'll see. I will definitely be writing a review of the movie as well, so yeah. In the meantime~.

(this review contains no spoilers!)

Watchmen

STORY - Watchmen presents a very good question: superheroes only fight the symptoms of a greater disease that affects all of mankind, so who is there to cure the actual disease? Is it even possible to cure? In a slight alternate universe, the disease has brought us to the brink of a third world war, and as the saying goes, if WW3 is fought with nuclear weapons, then WW4 will be fought with rocks, if at all. There are other themes, though, including the idea of superheros in the real world, and power. Blasphemous as it may be, I've read very little of Alan Moore's other work, but I've pretty much fallen in love with his style. The prose is very sophisticated and the dialogue is top notch and natural. New York is recognizable, and this could well be our real world. The story is presented on many different levels and all are interconnected, whether directly, tangentially, or metaphorically. I think a lot of comics have literary merit, but Watchmen is a classic example all the same.

Many aspects of the story openly mock the trends and stereotypes within superhero comics, but even in a world where superheroes exist, Watchmen makes direct references back to real comics in our past, such as Action Comics #1, where the Man of Steel was born. It's these little things that make the illusion all the more convincing and engrossing, and that illusion is perpetuated by the material in between chapters: excerpts from documents within this universe, including memoirs, reviews, letters, essays, newspaper clippings, notes, and photographs. It reminded me a lot of Stephen King's Carrie (the novel, not the movie) though I'm sure that King wasn't the first to use this brilliant storytelling tactic either. All the details, all the thought, and all the angles: everything fit together so neatly, and I appreciated that Moore made everything so utterly convincing that the first time I encountered some of these excerpts, I had to wonder if he actually took them from some source material in our real world.

At its core, Watchmen is really just a murder mystery. The multiple levels at which you can read it allow for tons of little details that hint towards the final revelations. I love stuff like that. You can read it again and again and still go "ahha!" at the things you never noticed before; you can continue to draw connections and parallels between all the different characters and events. You don't just "get it" once. You get it again and again and that feeling is great. And really, the depth of the political and philosophical commentary is just extra. A very enjoyable extra, yes, but extra all the same. And the ending? I have pretty mixed feelings about it, but regardless of that, I wouldn't say it's a bad ending. It just makes me wonder what Alan Moore really thinks and feels about the subject.

CHARACTER - No matter how you look at it, Rorschach is pretty much a badass. Whether or not you actually agree with his principles and philosophies, he is a badass. It's hard not to admire someone who is so true to himself and what he believes in. It's also easy for me to appreciate homage characters, and Rorschach is pretty much Steve Ditko (and/or his characters Mr. A and The Question), who has been described to me by a professor as being of a similar personality and philosophy. Annnd... I've pretty much always like superhero characters that consider their masked identity their "true" identitiy while their human personality is only a facade. It's why I like Batman so much. And it's one of the many reasons Watchmen gives for why people decide to become masked vigilantes -- they're insane.

Despite wild pseudoscience as far as physics and technology go, the realism in Watchmen is persistent, and one of the clearest examples is its cast of characters. With the exception of Dr. Manhattan, none of the heroes in Watchmen have actual powers beyond their personal resolve and technical ability. Motivation for a career in crimefighting is varied and ranges from pureness of character to fetishism, idealistic romanticism, and moral objectivism. The essays and articles that accompany the comic really emphasize this, and it's easy to conclude that most of the superheros are at least a little mentally unbalanced -- still, most are not such overt cases that it feels contrived.

Rorschach does not change much as Watchmen progresses, but more and more insight on his character is gradually revealed. He himself recounts his past to the audience and the distance he places between the person he is in the present and the person he was in the past is profound. I don't want to exhaustively go through the rest of the cast, but suffice to say that they are all very human. Jon Osterman, Laurie Juspeczyk, and Dan Dreiberg are all exceptionally well-rounded characters, the latter two especially. I had a harder time following Jon's logic, but given the nature of his character, that might just be an ironic coincidence. Adrian Veidt also felt a little further out there, but I guess not everyone's perfect (those feel like pretty ironic words too). But hell, even the Comedian was a good, multi-faceted character and he's already dead on page one.

The supporting cast is also brilliant. The city is populated with many personalities and their lives serve to parallel many themes in the story. Though the sniplets we get of them are small and seemingly insignificant, the way they're all intertwined and interconnected in the end makes certain events hit harder. It's always the little things that make the bigger picture seem crazier and more amazing. The newspaper vendor whose name you don't even get until halfway through, the boy reading comics by the electric car pump -- these characters are just as real as anyone else in the story, perhaps even moreso because their lives are so ordinary -- it's these characters that complete the illusion that's contained within the pages you're reading.

ART - I'm really not that familiar with Dave Gibbons's work, but I definitely enjoyed his art in Watchmen. At first glance, it's pretty generic superhero stuff, but the feel of that style really suits the series, so it's no big setback. Besides, Gibbons's characters are chiseled, consistent, and very expressive. Like many American comic artists, his angles and environments are masterful, and his spot blacks are fantastic. I've been shown some of his Watchmen pages as plain inks with no color, and honestly, I feel like they would have worked perfectly fine just like that. The nine-grid layout system that's used throughout the comic allows for very precise control of time and pacing. The story moves along very steadily for the most part, but it's very easy to tell when a scene is being sped up or slowed down. Occasionally, there will be an oversized panel for emphasis, and since the rest of the structure is so clean, that emphasis is tenfold.

Gibbons also did the letterwork for the comic. I'm usually not drawn to lettering because few people take the time to make it interesting, but I really enjoyed how it was done here. Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan's dialogue bubbles are very distinct, and it fits great because I imagine both to have very unique voices -- the former because he's speaking through fabric and just has a very quirky speech pattern in general, and the latter because... he's a freak? There are also different caption types between Rorschach's journal and the narrative of the pirate story within a story. Once again, it's the little things that make everything so clear and tightly packaged. I approve.

John Higgins's colorjob put me off at first, especially when I have Gibbons's beautiful inks to consider, but it's definitely something I got used to. While simple, the colors definitely help to set the moods of certain scenes and environments, as well as provide additional clarity when moving between narratives and locations. It's also worth noting that printers and colors were more limited when Watchmen first debuted. After a few chapters, the simplicity and the clashing of some of the palettes stopped bothering me altogether. Honestly, I would hate to ever see a "remastered" version with a more modern coloring style -- in conjunction with the nostalgic, nine-panel layouts, it just wouldn't fit.

OVERALL - You know, I kind of don't think the tagline "Who watches the watchmen?" fits as well as it should. I don't feel as if that question represents the most important theme of the story. I think the words in Rorschach's journal on the first page are a better representation. Watchmen is a very well written piece of literature. The artwork and visual storytelling is good, but the story and the writing is undoubtedly its greatest merit. I think it's a great introduction work for people who don't read comics in general, but especially for manga fans who don't read Western works because they perceive the superhero-dominated mainstream to be generic and shallow. There's a very good reason it's so widely revered. I was not disappointed.

The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists, and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, "Save us!" ...And I'll look down and whisper, "No."

Fans and Artists: Anime Art is a Crutch

2009-02-25T02:08:00.002-05:00

I suppose I used to be the same way, but now it really bothers me when people react so indignantly towards people who regard their anime-styled art negatively. I don't think the debate should really be centered around creativity though. Creativity is too subjective of an adjective and just inherently not worth the grief that a debate on its definition or application would cause. It isn't about anime having just one distinct style that people copy because I'll be the first to agree that there are hundreds of completely different styles within anime and manga and that it isn't just defined by big eyes, little noses, and weird hair. It isn't even just anime, but any pre-existing style, be it that Western superhero look, the Disney style, or the Jhonen Vasquez style.

Instead, I think the issue should be more about how so many people use these styles as a crutch and how and why it hinders their development as artists. If you're only drawing as an unimportant hobby, and if you have no real desire to improve, then I guess it doesn't really matter. But if drawing means something to you, and if you really want to get better, then it's really imperative that you work on the fundamentals: it's imperative that you draw real things, that you draw what you actually see.

Most professionals are able to draw in a realistic manner, regardless of what their actual commercial work is like. Mickey Mouse doesn't really look anything like a mouse, but I'm sure Walt Disney drew plenty of real mice in his sketchbooks. Sometimes, I'm really not sure what the hell CLAMP is thinking in terms of anatomy, but I'd like to think that they are actually perfectly capable of drawing realistic humans and that their anatomical exaggerations are done completely on purpose. Honestly, I think it's embarrassing otherwise. Take Rob Liefeld for example; the man is notoriously inept at rendering believable anatomy, especially in women, and even though his style sold comic books in the 90's, there has been rampant criticism of his obvious weaknesses. I get the feeling this is because all he did growing up was copy comic books without understanding any of the hows and whys; thus, because he never studied real anatomy or real people, everything he draws is wildly off. The sad thing is that he still doesn't seem to have realized this, and much of his recent work is still filled with inconsistent flaws.

It's fine if you start off copying anime you like, styles you like. My first foray into drawing humans was basically copying and fanarting Sailor Moon (before that, I mostly drew animals). Ridiculously long legs and big eyes galore! I got more "serious" about drawing humans when I got into Dragonball Z. Hello spikey hair and gigantic muscles! You have to realize after a while though; Akira Toriyama draws eyebrows attached to eyeballs and it's kind of creepy... and also, half of those muscles probably don't exist. But I also believe that Toriyama has done drawing studies of real people with real anatomy, and that he could draw a realistic person if he wanted. Drawing off of someone else's style is okay for a start, but eventually, you need to stop taking their word for it. The world isn't actually how so and so draws them.

Take a look at the real world. (Highest definition graphics! No lag!) Take a look at real people. Draw it. Draw them. Look at real fingers and real faces and real arms and muscles and body structures. You shouldn't be able to break the rules without knowing what they are first. You can't draw a highly-stylized caricature without first knowing what the person actually looks like. It's easier to make things up when you know how they actually are. You can't make up convincing folds in imaginary clothing without having first drawn dozens of real folds from observation.

"When I was in college my art teacher yelled at me for drawing anime facial features instead of realistic ones…but I was like sorry I can’t suddenly draw realism when I’ve been drawing anime style for 4 years."

Quotes like that really strike me. It's true -- you can't suddenly draw realistically if all you've been doing for years after years is focus on someone else's style. Or even if you've cobbled together several other people's styles and have forged something for yourself out of the chaos, if you don't understand why you draw things the way you draw them, then you own nothing. Why are arms shaped this way? What are all of the subtle curves and bumps in the contour? If you mimic a style, but don't understand the underlying structures, it's hard to fabricate different poses and pictures for which you don't have a reference. If you don't understand what's under the drawing, you can't do as much on your own -- at least not convincingly.

But if you understand realism, then you can make anything out of it. If you know that ears are the same height as the distance from your brow to your nose, you won't have proportion issues no matter what angle your head is turned to, no matter why style you're drawing in. If you know that the distance between your eyes is one eye length, you can apply that knowledge to any style and it won't look weird. If you know that your foot is roughly the same length as the distance between your elbow and your wrist, you can exaggerate accordingly if you want someone to have bigger-than-normal feet or smaller-than normal feet. If you understand the real structure of the face, then you can exaggerate certain portions of it to your desired effect. Bigger eyes and mouths portray more emotion, and smaller noses are a side effect of that. If you don't know any of these things, and if you're only drawing based on someone else's drawing, then what are you going to do when things don't look right? Will you realize what you've done wrong? And if you don't, how can you improve?

Like I said, if you have no real desire to improve, then that's your own business, but especially for those that entertain the idea of doing art for a living -- drawing your own comic, among other fantasies popular in the community -- drawing from life and studying realism is an invaluable fundamental. This is not to discourage you from drawing in a style -- I mean, come on, my art is predominantly "anime-styled" -- but your stylized drawings look so much better when you actually have a grasp of what's real. So I can definitely understand why art teachers and professors across the planet are inclined to frown when all you want to draw is anime. It isn't that anime is uncreative or unoriginal so much as the style becomes a crutch. If you don't want to draw realism, then you won't improve.

Don't be so indignant. It's for your own good. Once you prove you can draw for realz, I'm sure they will have no problem letting you draw your silly animu and mango.

TV Cuts VS Full Versions

2009-02-19T14:45:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, "trust you" by Yuna Ito debuted as Gundam 00 S2's second ending theme. I've always considered Yuna Ito to be a good artist -- her voice is very pretty and most of her melodies are nice to listen to. I liked the work she did for the two live action NANA movies, but I had yet to hear a song of hers that really struck me as being amazing. "trust you" was definitely a first love kind of thing, though I do think that the context of 00's ending animation, as well as the themes of the series itself, helped a lot with that. It's a very thoughtful package; both the song and the animation have a nostalgic, peaceful, and contemplative feel to them. It's the best kind of ending theme: one that makes you reflect on the series in a serious kind of way. It's especially appropriate for Gundam, even if I don't really think 00 specifically deserves something so appropriate.

I found myself listening to the song pretty often and counting the days until the single's release. That's the wonderful marketing ploy of it all. Anime themes are always singles, and they always debut on air a month or two before the single's due to release. That's a month or two that you have to sit around with a minute to minute and a half teaser of a beautiful song. It drove me nuts. I actually really love the TV cut version of "trust you" though; it's easy to tell where things are abbreviated, but I thought it was pieced together very well. It's obvious that the intro is probably longer and it feels like the first verse extends directly into final chorus.

Well, the single's still not due out until March 4th, but the PV released a day or two ago, so I got ahold of a PV rip. Finally! A full length version of the song! ...Why doesn't it sound as nearly good as the TV Cut?

The piano intro is pretty, but I felt like it was too long now. The vocals start around :30, but they really could have started around :20. The first verse and chorus are pretty much the same right down to the "hanasanaide." It then eases into the same piano melody and begins the second verse, which just doesn't sound as polished as the first. There are more phrases were it seems like she's trying to fit too many syllables into a short space. It's particular noticable right before the second chorus: "tsunagatteru to, Im always by your side" just doesn't sound as elegant to me as "mata aeru to, I'm waiting for your love."

The bridge comes after that, and I really don't like the bridge. The melody of the vocals don't really seem to fit at all for one reason or another. Following the bridge, chorus is repeated again, but as we get to the fourth "I love you, I trust you," she changes the pitch of the "you" in both lines and it sounds very awkward, like it's incomplete, like there should be something else that comes with that note. The final lines of the chorus are then sung, and it's really not so bad, but in contrast to the intro, I almost felt like there should have been more piano at the end. It's still a decent song, but the full length version really disappointed me.

This isn't the first time this has happened. I had similar feelings towards the full version of T.M. Revolution's "resonance," the first opening of SOUL EATER, where, again, the second verse just didn't feel nearly as cohesive as the first and the bridge felt kind of awkward, though I don't think it was as disappoint as "trust you."

Sometimes the opposite happens: I'll love the full version and the TV cut seems like an unskillfully chopped up version of a wonderful song. This was the case for me regarding "Life is like a boat," by Rie fu, Bleach's first ending, as well as "READY STEADY GO" by L'Arc~en~Ciel, Fullmetal Alchemist's second opening. For both those cases though, I heard the full version before I heard the TV cut because I got into the series later. So is it just because I like the version I heard first better?

But for the vast majority of songs, both the TV cut and the full version sound fine to me regardless of which I heard first. I don't have a problem with any of the TV cuts of Death Note's themes, and I love the full versions just as much. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei's themes are all brilliant, TV cut, full version, or otherwise. I didn't have a problem with the TV cuts of "Daybreak's bell" or "Ash Like Snow" by L'Arc~en~Ciel and the brilliant green respectively, the first and second openings of Gundam 00's first season, even though I heard (and loved) both full versions before I started the series.

So what is it with these few songs? Just random chance that for a few songs, I'll just stick to the version I heard first? It makes more sense for the full versions that sound better because I realize that the people responsible for mixing the TV cuts can't be expected to create a perfect representation of the original song each and every time, but what's up with the full versions that just aren't as awesome? I guess in those cases, the TV cut creators should get a pat on the back for making an okay song better. Or does animation play a bigger factor than I realize? I love the accompanying animation for both "trust you" and "resonance" so maybe that's a reason? But even listening to the song without the animation, I feel like the TV cuts are better than the full versions. And besides, I love the animations that accompany a lot of other themes too.

What do you guys think? Are you usually more drawn to TV cuts or full versions? Which happens more often? Why do you think that is?

I still look forward to the "trust you" single's official release on the 4th because it'll gain me a new karaoke track, but this isn't the first time I've wished for a karaoke track for the TV cut version as well. (Well, okay, the first time I've wished this wasn't because I liked the TV cut better; it was because the full version of Aya Hirano's "Hare Hare Yukai" is just too damn long to sing and dance to simultaneously.)

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

2009-02-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, a friend of mine picked up the first of the two-issue release of Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, written by Neil Gaiman, penciled by Andy Kubert, and inked by Scott Williams. I love Batman, but I have a terrible time keeping up with recent releases because some storylines suck more than others, and the good ones tend to have multiple tie-ins across various series and titles. (Organizing and keeping up with both Final Crisis and Marvel's Civil War sucked; I gave up.) Usually, I will just wait for compilation releases like The Long Halloween or pick up the superspecialawesome oneshots like Arkham Asylum. This is probably why I end up reading more manga than Western comics, or at least, mainstream Western comics.

But since my friend had it handy, I read the issue. It was fantastic: beautiful, well-drawn, and well-written. It was nostalgic. And sad. And it made me think about how different superhero comics are from all the manga I read because there isn't just one creator. There are hundreds of people involved in the creative process and there are generations of stories because the titles last so long. People of different ages have different perceptions of Batman because different medias are popular at different times, but just about everyone knows who Batman is. The character is immortal in that way.

So how can they write character deaths like this? How can Batman die?

Of course, it's easy to say that Batman won't really die or stay dead. I believe DC has a reputation for retconning deaths anyway. (Or otherwise making a plot out of it, ala The Many Deaths of Batman in Batman 433-435.) But Marvel killed Captain America for realz, so why not? The way Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? is playing out at the moment doesn't seem to lend itself to someone taking up the mantle like Bucky did for Steve Rogers, but the planned hiatuses (cancellations?) of Nightwing, Robin, and Birds of Prey, and the upcoming Battle for the Cowl three-part story seems to suggest as much. Will someone replace Bruce Wayne as Batman? Is Batman really Batman if it isn't Bruce Wayne?

Assuming he remains dead, the decision to kill Bruce Wayne will impact the series for the rest of forever. Will there eventually be a generation of fans who will have never known him? Will they only know Dick Grayson or Jason Todd to be Batman? Or someone else entirely? Terry McGinus? That thought is bewildering to me. It's so different from manga, which pretty much lives and dies with its original creator(s). Even though new Astro Boys are being produced after Osamu Tezuka's death, there is still the original to trace back to.

What is the original Batman? A comic credited to Bob Kane when in reality, Kane contributed very little beyond the name "Batman" and Bill Finger did everything else. Bob Kane's Batman originally had red in his costume, wings, and no gloves. Is this original relevant anymore? The debut Batman was really quite campy and had no problem with using firearms. The modern Batman has become a psychological wonder with his refusal to use firearms a core part of his character. While I'm sure most people will appreciate the original as part of the history, very few will herald it as the best as I'm sure most would with Tezuka's Astro Boy.

So if Bruce Wayne is dead, even if he will forever remain Batman to my generation and those before me, will he be nothing more than a detail of history for kids fifty years from now? It's a depressing thought, but the same could be said of Captain America. (And I wonder, what does Steve Rogers' death say about our country in recent years?) It's such a strange idea.

It's too bad business won't allow for the name Batman to die with Mr. Wayne. That would be ideal to me. It isn't like they couldn't just sell repackaged copies of No Man's Land or Cataclysm or Arkham Asylum: Living Hell forever. It isn't like they'd have to stop making movies. I mean, it's working well enough for Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion and Dragonball, right?

Dropped: Kurokami

2009-02-13T01:49:00.003-05:00

Maybe it's just because today was a pretty shitty day, but I couldn't sit through all of episode 5 of Kurokami, so I'm dropping it. I suppose it was only a matter of time. I hated the first episode. It was boring and predictable; all I really wanted to do was punch the protagonist in the face, and I get the feeling I shouldn't have been laughing my head off when that little girl got flattened by a bus. I considered dropping it then, but figured it wouldn't hurt to at least watch a few more. The second episode was markedly better, but the third episode tanked again. By the fourth episode, I was quite ready to drop it again, and the beginning of the fifth episode sealed the deal.

It's a shame, I guess, because the animation is pretty damn slick and the music is interesting. The fight scenes are pretty from a distance, but they're painfully boring to me. It's because I feel utterly detatched from all of the characters involved so I don't care about the outcomes. I don't care about Keita because he's whiny and generic and I just couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for his sobstory. It's just too convenient. I don't care about Kuro because she tries too hard to be cute and there's nothing about her personality that's interesting at all. I don't care about her desire to kill her brother, and I don't even care enough to want to find out more about whatever the hell she is.

The premise was all right enough. The idea of dopplegangers sounded neat enough, but the series has been moving too slow on that front for me to care. The cleverly disguised (or not) antagonists are sneaking around in the background with those snatches of plot, but it isn't prominent enough to be meaningful. It's a damn shame. I might continue with the manga since it's so vastly different from the anime -- I don't doubt that I would have had an easier time sympathizing with Keita if he had been a good-natured computer programmer instead of an emo high school student, and being able to sympathize with the protagonist is pretty key for me. Unfortunately, it's harder for me to sit down and read manga than it is for me to pop in an episode of an anime.

It's further disappointing because Kurokami was the only new series I picked up this season. Now that I'm dropping it, the only current series I'm following are Soul Eater and Gundam 00 S2, both of which will be ending soon (well, for the latter, I guess it's kind of a relief). I have no idea how well the Kurokami dub's been doing on IATV, but it seems to me that they could have picked a much better series to be groundbreaking with. Then again, they never did announce any kind of official online stream, so maybe it was all irrelevant after all. Not enough people get IATV for it to matter.

Man, today's been quite the lame day. :\

Review: Darker than BLACK

2009-02-10T18:02:00.005-05:00

Finally. I finished watching Darker than BLACK (and its OAV) over the weekend, so here's the review for the series. I'm still rather surprised with how much I ended up liking the series, but I'm not sure I explained that very well in the review. I never feel like I adequately explain anything in my reviews, haha; maybe that's why they always end up excruciatingly long.

I'd really like to see a sequel to DtB though. If that BONES document leak last summer was right about the Fullmetal Alchemist sequel, then here's to hoping that DtB part was true too, eh? As much as I'd love to have some answers to the five billion questions I have though, I have to wonder if having a sequel explain it all would take away from the huge mystery that is this series. I watched the last two episodes again while writing the review, but I still can't be confident in making any kind of solid conclusion about the ending. It's nice in a way, probably because it's such a big change from the usual fare.

Side note: I can't decide if I should bother reviewing the OAV. It's really not that important to anything, but it was entertaining all the same -- probably as close to DtB will ever get to crack.

"The Fans Ruined it For Me."

2009-02-06T00:23:00.004-05:00

I hear this a lot: "I used to like such and such, but the fans ruined it for me." And it bugs me every time I hear it; after all, why should the fans have anything to do with the actual series or game or whatever else? If you like it, then you will like it -- I don't understand why so many people give power to the masses by letting them affect their opinion of something. A series is not its fans, and the fans do not make the series. Sure, sometimes it might be annoying hearing fangirls and boys fawn over the various bishounen and moeblobs from your series of choice, if the only reason you decide to dislike those bishounen and moeblobs is because of the fans, then you're not thinking for yourself anymore.

Case in point, I love Kingdom Hearts -- okay, it's not an anime or manga, but I think it's a good example because the fans are notoriously obnoxious. I think the first three games were excellent (I am sad that so many people forget about Chain of Memories), and I love the ending to KH2. I like almost all of the characters and enjoy what we do see of their in-game relationships. Does it annoy me that fangirls seem to like slashing every single male character in the entire fandom? (Regardless of whether they ever actually officially interact? lol@AxelxDemyx?) It used to a little, but really, I am a huge proponent of the "to each his own" ideal. I may not like what you like, but I will support to the death your right to like it. And since I'm active on deviantART and people like to bitch about various fandoms always getting frontpage attention: I may not like what you draw, but I will support to the death your right to draw it. And if it's popular? Good for you!

I don't really understand when people get disappointed that "overhyped" series aren't as good as one may come to expect. It's more of that giving power to the masses, which is kind of hilarious when you consider that most people would say that they don't trust the masses. And it's true -- don't trust them. Put your trust in people you actually know, then you can be legitimately disappointed when things aren't as good as they've been described to you. I didn't watch Haruhi Suzumiya because of its popularity; I watched it because several people whose opinions I care about recommended it to me. I was disappointed for those same reasons. Similarly, I didn't start Naruto until two years after its debut and only because several bothersome friends kept suggesting it. I didn't stop reading it last summer as any consequence of annoying fans; I stopped because I was tired of waiting for something to happen.

I also refuse to stop liking something because it's popular or to be ashamed of getting into something because it got popular first. It annoys me to no end when people rag on Naruto for being popular or for its general fanbase being young and silly. Getting offended at kids being kids is stupid. Saying that they're bringing down the image of anime in general is blaming them for the ignorance of the rest of the population (regardless of what is in the mainstream, people will use what's popular as a stereotype for the rest of the community; I don't really think anyone would be happier if the populace's general impression of anime was crazy kids fighting giant robots in other giant robots or bounty hunters in space).

The moral of this post is to think for yourself! Who cares what everyone else thinks and does? If you like it, then like it. No shame, kids. No shame.

Sorry, No Catgirls For You

2009-02-03T16:21:00.004-05:00

Well, first off, after two months or so of bumming the Anime Nano feeds, I've finally come up with a short list of blogs that I seem to click through regularly, so I've updated my blogroll to the side to reflect this. But considering Nano itself is on the list, I end up reading a lot more blogs than that since I'll generally at least skim anything with an interesting title.

Anyway. I found this strange and slightly disturbing articl e via Slashdot today. There are people trying to combine human with animal DNA. Seriously, what the hell? Okay, okay, so despite what Slashdot implied, they weren't actually trying to make crazy mutant hybrids -- they were trying to see if mixing the DNA would enable them with a more reliable way to grow stem cells. I still find that goal kind of questionable though; even if the experiment had resulted in living stem cells, would they have been able to grow into anything useful? If you've suffered third degree burns, would you want a skin graft with skin grown from human-cow hybrid cells? o_o

I'm not really sure anymore what made the catgirl (and catboy, and various other hybrids) attractive in the first place. I find it especially puzzling when so much of the anime community seems to look down at the furry subculture. I don't think many people ever considered the fantasy any more than just a fantasy with no scientific plausibility whatsoever, but it's still kind of a relief to know that it's now proven not to work. I still never thought anyone would be crazy enough to try it for real though.

If catpeople ever came to be, I'm pretty sure they would take over the world.

Drawing and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

2009-01-25T16:54:00.004-05:00

On the first day of class this quarter, one of my professors started things cheerfully by talking about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and how devastatingly scary it is, especially for people whose entire lives come from repetitious use of their hands -- not just their livelihoods, their lives. As he put it, some people were just put on this planet to draw. He mentioned how CTS is normally a condition associated with older folk, but that in recent years those afflicted have become younger and younger, perhaps because of video games, but also because of more jobs that involve typing and such. And yet, the exact cause of CTS is still largely in debate. Common knowledge says it's caused by repetitive action, but science still says that the biggest risk factor is a genetic predesposition.

So I don't know just how worried I should be, especially considering the fact that I seem to have very, very poor circulation in my hands. I can put on gloves, wear them for twenty minutes, and my hands will still be as icy as they were before. My forearm will be fine, but my hands will be freezing. There are probably plenty of other explanations for why my hands can't seem to stay warm, but as an idiot pursuing art as a career, CTS is easily one of my biggest fears, right up there under blindness. If my blood vessels can't seem to reach my fingertips, how long will it be before my nerves can't either?

That Tomoko Ninomiya of Nodame Cantabile was recently diagnosed with CTS doesn't help either. Hers was probably triggered by pregnancy more than her profession, but it made me wonder just how many artists out there suffer or have suffered from CTS. My roommate is one of them. Hers was caused by breaking her wrist a few years ago; she had to have super expensive surgery and wore a wrist brace for a good while afterwards. She's mostly fine now and even survived the intensiveness that was 24 Hour Comic Day last October, but all the same. I don't want to have super expensive (and probably painful) surgery or wear a wrist brace.

Currently, I probably don't draw any more than 3-4 hours a day on a good day, but I'm also having a slow quarter. During finals week last quarter, I probably drew some eight hours a day. I can draw for about 30 minutes at a time before my hand needs a break, at which point I usually shake it around and go to check email and such. After a certain point, I'll need the breaks more frequently, but it doesn't really take long to shake off the aching/cramping in my hand and massaging my knuckles helps too. The massaging kind of helps with the circulation thing too, but I've kind of just gotten in the habit of pressing my hands against my stomach because it's always warm there. :|

Even on the days when I draw until my hand wants to fall off and it hurts to even stretch my fingers, like aforementioned 24 Hour Comic Day, everything is usually fine a day or two later. So I don't know. Maybe I worry too much. No one wants surgery, but at least it exists. I guess my roommate can attest to a reasonable enough recovery (so best wishes to Ninomiya), and I don't know of any artist offhand that got CTS as a direct result of drawing too much. Besides, there's really no avoiding that repetitive strain in this field. I don't really have delusions of becoming a comic artist, but even commercial illustrators have that kind of strenuous work. There are no preventive measures to take beyond those periodic breaks (which are harder to fit in when you've got a deadline...). You're going to draw. You're going to draw a lot. Deal with it. :(

Oh. PS. Happy (Lunar) New Year!

I Want Karaoke Tracks

2009-01-22T23:36:00.004-05:00

So I like to sing. Generally, if I know the lyrics to something, I can't help but sing. Sometimes, even if I don't know the lyrics, I'll make something up and warble along. I don't own an mp3 player, so I make up for this by singing a capella to myself when I'm on the go or waiting for the bus or whatever. I suppose I like to think I'm reasonably good, so sometimes when I need a break from work or have random pent up energy, I'll have a recording session with Audacity and see if I can get anything half-decent recorded. As such, I really love the fact that many j-pop artists release off-vocal, instrumental, or karaoke tracks alongside their singles.

I don't normally play the karaoke tracks by themselves, mostly because I get really self-conscious if I don't have the original vocals to hide behind, but most of them will match up with the vocal version, so I can record myself alongside the original vocals, then trade the track for the karaoke to hear my own vocals. It works well enough. (Maybe someday, I'll have something that's decent enough to share here?)

Unfortunately, not all of the music I listen to and want to sing to provides karaoke tracks. I've noticed that most j-pop singers will provide them for their singles. Tommy heavenly6, angela, FictionJunction YUUKA, Nami Tamaki, Mika Nakashima, and Utada Hikaru all generally provide a karaoke track. ALI PROJECT usually has karaoke tracks (not like I'll ever be able to sing their stuff anyway). L'Arc~en~Ciel, Gackt, and T.M. Revolution are also pretty consistent about including a karaoke version of their singles. But the further you venture from pop and the more into rock and alternative you get, the less likely there will be karaoke tracks.

I don't expect -miyavi-, Dir en grey, or Maximum the Hormone to ever include karaoke tracks. Maybe it's just because it's much harder for the average person to sing along with their music, but that doesn't stop them from appearing on karaoke machines in karaoke bars, etc, so clearly there's some kind of demand for them. Most of the karaoke places I've visited have surprised me with the selection of music they have available. I don't really know how the licensing on these things work, but I suspect that ~~a lot~~ most of the songs don't feature "official" karaoke versions, only edited versions where someone has manually extracted the vocal track. Such methods usually leave a ghost voice, but at a karaoke bar, it'd be really hard to tell. This is probably how they manage to get karaoke versions of most English-language songs as well, 'cause really, when was the last time an American, Canadian, or British artist included an official karaoke track on their single or album?

It's obvious from the word itself that karaoke originated in Japan, but I've always wondered why its popularity is so subdued in the States when it's all the rage across Asia. I mean, it can't be that only Asians like singing, right? If shows like American Idol can be so popular, why aren't karaoke tracks more common on American musical releases? Why aren't there more karaoke places outside of Chinatowns? The Asian population is Savannah is slim to none, which means there isn't a karaoke place for miles and miles. This drives me crazy. I really want to go out to karaoke, but there's no where to go!

I think the only English-language official karaoke tracks I have are for Disney songs. Everyone loves to sing Disney songs, I guess? Or maybe it's because most of those movies are musicals? But if that's the case, why isn't there a karaoke version of every Broadway soundtrack? Why can't I find karaoke versions of the songs from The Lion King on Broadway? Beauty and the Beast on Broadway? RENT? I would really love to see more official karaoke version of English-language songs since it'd spare me the trouble of making them myself. Plenty of songs are begging to be sung to, so come on.

Maybe lack of encouragement in the form of karaoke tracks can be my excuse as to why I know the lyrics to more Japanese songs than English songs. 8|

Apparently, I'm Too ADD for Higurashi

2009-01-18T00:01:00.004-05:00

Usually, I'm very much against spoilers, so maybe it can be considered significant that I just let my brother explain the rest of this to me in lieu of actually watching it. For a series that seems to be universally heralded as being awesome, I was kind of surprised at just how much I didn't care for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (+Kai). The art style and animation was a huge turn off. The characters weren't engaging, and the setup of everything just reminded me of all the things I don't like in anime. Even the violence and gore wasn't very entertaining. :\ And the repeating scenarios just... struck that short attention span of mine, I guess. I wanted the explanation to be more obvious. It's a mystery; I wanted the clues to be more there. I did not want to sit through 26+ episodes of mindfuckery stuck on repeat before knowing what the hell was going on.

There is merit in being sneaky and unexpected, and honestly, I'd say Higurashi's story and plot is pretty unique, but it really failed at getting me to care. Because I felt nothing towards any of the characters, I wasn't really even inclined to try and solve the mystery myself, especially when it wasn't even obvious that it was a mystery at first. It was just, lol retcon! Is it just me? Am I just too stupid to figure things out myself or too stupidly impatient to not wait and see? Maybe, but I have a hard time imagining that anyone was really drawn to the cast. It was a generic assortment of moe girls and your usual loser guy. Who cares? Why should anyone care?

Maybe I'm just too used to characters driving the story and not the other way around.

I'm really curious though, did anyone else start Higurashi and not feel like finishing it at all?

Yes, it's Still True

2009-01-15T15:04:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like all those rumors were true, and TOKYOPOP hadn't been jumping the gun after all. ANN announced this morning that Sunrise has officially confirmed the live-action Cowboy Bebop project as a collaboration between itself, 20th Century Fox, and 3 Arts Entertainment. And whaddaya know, Keanu Reeves is going to be Spike after all.

I can't say I'm really surprised, but with every bit of news that comes up, I find myself getting a little more optimistic about the prospects for the film. It's a cautious optimism, but it's optimism all the same. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm going to give Reeves a chance. It's true that almost all of the roles I've seen him play (which admittedly, isn't many) all have the same general personality -- that stoic, reserved, almost confused kind of person that doesn't really suit Spike Spiegal at all. But nevertheless, if Reeves is really an actor, then he should be perfectly capable of acting outside of his comfort zone, especially if it's for a character he actually likes and admires. I had huge doubts about Heath Ledger being cast as the Joker, but look at how that turned out. I think it'll be really interesting to see if he can pull it off and perhaps grow as an actor.

Another point of optimism is the fact that so many original staff members seem to be involved. I'm thrilled to see that Shinichiro Watanabe, among others, will have a hand in producing. Reeves had mentioned wanting to stick as close to the source material as possible, and while neither he nor Watanabe will be the director, I can hope that their influence on set will gear it in a canonic direction. And anyway, Bebop's story and plot is much more flexible than say, Dragonball's, so I think any changes they do make will be less of a deal; they should be able to integrate everything much more smoothly.

I'm still interested in knowing who the rest of the cast will be and whether any of them will be cut from the movie for the sake of brevity and relevance (I would much rather see characters cut then having to split limited time between too many characters). Though I love both characters, I think that both Ed and Ein are pretty expendable, especially considering that they'd likely be the hardest to cast for. For Ed, they'd have to hunt down one hell of an androgynous kid, and for Ein, anything less than a perfectly trained Welsh Corgi will send fans into a rage. Because I'm not too knowledgable about actors, I don't have any ideals for Jet or Faye, but I feel like their achetypes are common enough that it won't be too much of an issue (the fact that I like Jet and Faye both less than Ed and Ein will also mean I'd probably be less critical).

Someone on the ANN forums mentioned his/her desire to know about the musical credits of the film -- what a damn good question! I'm kind of surprised no one else has really brought it up before now. The music in Bebop is a huge part of the experience, and I'm not sure I can really imagine Bebop without it. If they can get Ayumi Hamasaki to do music for Dragonball, will they be able to convince Yoko Kanno to come back and reprise her role in Bebop as composer? Personally, I wouldn't mind just recycling music from the anime series or animated movie if they can't get Kanno, but I understand that'd kind of be a cop out. Would it be the same with someone else? There are plenty of talented composers out there, and even though you don't hear a lot of jazz in films these days, I'm sure there's someone that can pull it off... even so, will it be the same? Sometimes I think that fans attach too much importance to the original people, but sometimes, there's a good reason for that.

Reactions across the community thus far seem pretty mixed, but I wonder about how people's opinions will change as more is revealed about the project. Right now, I have higher hopes for this than I've had for any other live-action adaptation by an American company. Part of that is simply because Bebop itself is more accessible to the mainstream than a title like Dragonball. Sci-fi can be mainstream, especially if it's filled with badasses and busty women. Serenity was a box-office flop, but I kind of blame that on the fact that it was a sequel. Bebop won't be a sequel. I can see non-anime fans watching and liking it if it's done right. At the very least, they will be able to take it more seriously than they could Speed Racer or can Dragonball. The former demanded you know and appreciate the original cartoon. The latter will demand that you be missing part of your brain.

More wait and see. I wonder if it'll really be done by 2010. Seems like a huge stretch, but hey, so did the whole Reeves thing at first.

In other news, this is my 100th blog entry here. :3 Go me.

Photoshoot: Leafeon (9" TOMY plush)

2009-01-11T11:47:00.001-05:00

I preordered this little bastard back in July. Truth be told, not long after I bought him, I tried to cancel my order because he did cost a pretty penny, and I probably shouldn't have gotten him in the first place. But YesAsia doesn't allow cancellations of preorders, so I thought I would resell him as soon as he got in. Long story short, I finally got a hold of him last week, but I couldn't resist opening the package because he was just so damn cute. Just look at that grin! So... I guess I'm keeping him for now, and taking him out back to the woods for photoshoots. ._.
I was a bit surprised at how small he was; I'm pretty sure initial reports of the release had him labeled as a 12" plush rather than a 9". He's also a lot stiffer than I expected. All of the leaves on his body, including his tail, but not including his ears, are made of hard felt. Since there are so many leaves, this means there's plenty of semi-pointy things poking out of his body, making him not very huggable. The base of his tail is this weird plastic thing, probably to support the extra felt that's there, and the leaf on his head is sewn so that it twists, which makes me feel like I'll inadvertently mess it up somehow even though it seems pretty stable. The fabric of his body itself is pretty hard as well, which means he isn't very flexible and attempts to pose him generally end in failure.

Still, he stands up pretty well, and his ears are really soft compared to the rest of his body. And his little grin just makes it look like he's up to no good. Ridiculously adorable.

I tied a ribbon around his neck because I'm a gigantic dork. Or something.

Epic sun! Except not really... the sun wasn't bright enough to get any awesome lens flares. D;

I really wish Leafeon had a bit more flexibility so I could pose him better; it was really frustrating having to change environments so often because there wasn't much I could do with him standing in place. Still, I guess it looks like he's enjoying his trip out into the wilderness?

His camouflage is pretty decent!

What's this? A randomass one dollar happy flower from Wal-Mart?? Some kind of deformed Sunflora?? I dunno!

Then we found a printer that had been abused and abandoned in a shallow creek. Damn college kids.

Then, because Savannah has a disturbing population of hobos, we found an abandoned hobo house in the woods, sandwiched between the dorms and the freeway. :|

I felt kind of weird taking pictures of it because I kept expecting the residing hobo to pop up out of the rags or to come gallivanting down the hill. But there really couldn't have been anyone there really recently because there was grass and leaves all over everything, so yeah.

Leafeon approves of this adventure, even though his right ear got attacked by little plant spores.

Ivysaur kid figure and Ivysaur Friends plush demand a cameo appearance! D8

Allergic to What You Love

2009-01-10T11:19:00.001-05:00

I picked up a Fullmetal Alchemist Flamel's cross necklace for $15 at Ikkikon 2007. I'm a big fan of the symbolism and think the crossover relevance to actual alchemy is interesting. I wore it nonstop for about a year and a half. Seriously, I think I only took that thing off on three or four occasions in all that time (and I'm pretty sure a few of those times was so that I could wear my Kingdom Hearts crown necklace instead ;3). I had fun telling people that, no, I'm not a medical student, when they thought it was caduceus. It was also a pretty good conversation starter with the few I encountered that knew what it was. Necklaces are good. You can proudly proclaim your fandom without being overly obvious, and those who don't understand will just think it's a pretty design and never know that you're a flaming weeaboo!

Unfortunately, at the end of that year and a half period, I found that I was developing a weird rash on my neck about where the necklace was hanging. I ignored it for a while, but it only got worse. I didn't want to think it was the necklace's fault, but it was kind of hard to deny. So I took it off. In about two weeks, the rash was gone. I put the necklace back on. The rash was back in another week. Damn.

I puzzled over it for a while, but then I googled around and found out about nickel allergy. I had never heard of it before, but I had never been a big jewelry person either. Up until this stupid Flamel's cross, I had pretty much never worn necklaces. After reading about it though, I was sure that this was what it is. It's stupid. Completely stupid. You can develop this allergy at any time in your life even if you've never had it before. And after that, you'll be allergic forever. There is no cure! Now doesn't that just bloody suck.

I was all kinds of pissed when I realized I pretty much couldn't wear the necklace again without getting a rash, not to mention the small collection of other fandom-centric jewelry I'd gathered by that point. I think I have two or three KH-related necklaces, several random rings, and a Death Note bracelet, though that's not all metal. Most of the normal jewelry I have is probably still okay. The birthstone necklace some relative gave me ten years ago is still okay because it's surgical-grade stainless steel, but I never wore that anyway. It's not fair.

Do they make fandom jewelry that's hypoallergenic? I doubt it. There are a lot of fandom necklaces floating around the market, and a good portion of that is made up of bootleg designs. It's pretty easy to tell that a lot of the stuff is made of piss-poor quality materials, but I imagine that most people, for the sake of their fandom, would be willing to overlook it if the design is accurate enough. I guess it was stupid of me to have left the necklace on at all times, but it would have been annoying to have to take the thing on and off all the time, and after a while, I would have just left weird not wearing it. I don't think that I'm the only person to have fallen victim to this either. At the very least, I know of plenty of other people that wear the same damn fandom necklace all the time.

So what becomes of us? After we come down with this horrible, irreversible nickel allergy, what then? These days, my Flamel's cross sits deep in one of my drawers, never seeing the light of day. I am sad for it. I want to wear it, but I can't. I've thought about buying a hypoallergenic chain and just transferring the cross onto the new chain, but then the colors wouldn't match at all, and if the cross itself touched my skin, it would still cause rashes. And every time another necklace comes out with a design I like, I'd need to buy a chain to go with it.

I think they should just make hypoallergenic fandom jewelry. It's probably a generalization, but I think it'd make sense that people would be more likely to wear fandom-related jewelry for long periods of time, subjecting them to the nickel allergy. But at the same time, the people most likely to buy fandom-related jewelry probably include a lot of folks that don't care as much for quality or health issues. They'll snatch up the pretty design first and then suffer the consequences later. Like me! So where's the incentive for these manufacturers to swap out their cheap, nickel-infested metals for the nickel-free stuff? There's none.

So, to all you weeaboos out there who have yet to come down with this allergy, I'd suggest taking off your Squall Leonhart gunblade necklace now and again. It's a sad, sad day when you discover that rash on your neck.

Photoshoot: Sora, Valor Form (7" Kotobukiya figure)

2009-01-07T13:25:00.002-05:00

You know, I'm actually kind of surprised at the prevalence of figure collecting across this community. Few people I know in real life do any serious (figure) collecting, and I'm not much of a serious collector either, especially considering my first figure was a gift. But I do like to consider myself an amateur photographer, so I thought it'd be fun to take some pictures of what figures I do have. The critic in me also wanted to write a review, but I didn't feel like taking pictures of all the little flaws in my figures, so uh... I dunno. I'll probably mention them anyway since a lot of the flaws affect how I can pose the figures, but no full-blown, formal review.

Sora wasn't my first figure (Axel was). He was the last thing I bought at Ikkikon in 2007 before barring myself from the Dealer's Room. I was going to get the Final Form version but decided that I liked the keyblades for the Valor Form better. (Valor has Fenrir and Fatal Crest; Final has Sleeping Lion and Fatal Crest.)

His very detailed, but because the figure seems to consider accuracy more important than articulation, and because Nomura's designs are consisently ridiculous, Sora's not all that flexible as a result. His arms can't be raised higher than his shoulders, it's very hard to bend his knees because of his pants, and it's generally stupidly difficult to get him to stand in different positions. A lot of the joints are also poorly made -- for example, Sora's shoes are made of three seperate pieces that don't fit together very well, so parts of it fall apart when you try to pose him. =_=

I guess it's not that big a deal if his purpose is just to stand and look awesome. Sorry he's a bit dusty in these photos by the way; he's been in storage all December, and I forgot to dust him before the shoot... which takes place on my ghetto desk setup consisting of a too-thin white cloth scrap (from a failed cosplay venture) and a few sheets of paper! Can you tell that I love playing with depth of field even though I'm not very skilled at it?

It was ridiculously hard getting him to stand like this. For a few shots I was actually trying to hold him steady with one hand and taking the picture with the other -- that didn't end up working out very well though. ;x

Emo pose is emo.

Stole Axel's chakram, lol~. It matches his costume so well though! :D The angle here makes me happy too.

Funny thing: Sora can hold Axel's chakram just as well as Axel can, if not better. The sad part is that Sora has pegs in his hands that are intended to fit into corresponding holes on his keyblades, but it never works out right somehow because of his fingers. Inversely, Axel has holes in his hands intended to fit with pegs on his chakram, but that never quite works out either. 8| I'll probably dust off Axel sometime this weekend and do a photoshoot of him next.

Sora's legs in this picture is pretty much all he can do with his legs without a lot of pain and anger.

Annnnd... Spirit Bomb / Kamehameha / Rasengan! 8D

Review: Ouran High School Host Club

2009-01-06T10:23:00.004-05:00

I finished my review for Ouran High School Host Club. I'm still surprised at how great this series actually was, and really want to see a sequel for it. In the meantime, I think I'll make my way through the manga. I wonder how many chapters of material the anime actually covers? When will there be enough material for a sequel? :3

The first eight episodes of Host Club are available dubbed and streaming from FUNimation's website. The first three episodes are also available subbed. I highly recommend checking them out~.

As far as the winter season goes, the first episode of Kurokami was amazingly disappointing, and I think I might end up dropping the series after another one or two episodes if nothing improves. It's really too bad; Bandai picked a really risky series to put so much effort in. If Kurokami does go by the wasteside, I guess I can finish Darker than BLACK or something instead.

I Had a Dream in Japanese -- With Subtitles

2009-01-04T13:40:00.002-05:00

A few nights ago, I had a dream. It was hazy, black and white, and I don't remember much of what happened. But I know the entire thing was in Japanese, and I know there were yellow subtitles floating there too. I woke up with the dialogue still bouncing around in my head. It was kind of disorienting. And kind of sad. I guess.

It's probably because I watched more anime in December than I ever have in a month. I had the entire month off from school, was stupid and didn't get a job in that time, and wasn't particularly motivated to do anything even vaguely relevant to my career. So I watched cartoons. Lots and lots of cartoons. Specifically, I ended up starting and finishing six whole series (Mushishi, Nodame Cantabile, Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen, Gundam 00 S1, Planetes, Ouran High School Host Club) and three movies/OAVs (Ghost in the Shell, 5 Centimeters per Second, GSD C.E. 73: Stargazer), all of which I've already reviewed except Host Club. I also started a half dozen other series that I've either put on hold or dropped: Ghost Hound (hold@1), Toshokan Sensou (drop@2), Seto no Hanayome (drop@3), Higurashi no Naka Koro ni (hold@7), Infinite Ryvius (hold@4), and Darker than BLACK (hold@5). I reread all of my Gundam Wing manga before I sold it, and I reread all of DOGS and Bullets and Carnage, not to mention keeping up with current episodes/chapters of Soul Eater, Gundam 00 S2, and Bakuman.

It's probably not impressive as some people's monthly consumption, but it's a lot for me, especially compared to the amount I watch when classes are in session or when I'm working in the summers (it took me a month to finish Spice and Wolf, a thirteen episode series, during school; it took me three days to catch up with thirty-five episodes of Gundam 00 during break). I've had too much anime on my brain, and that dream probably isn't the worst of it.

Is it bad that a lot of simple responses to every day situations come to me in Japanese first and I then have to translate it back into English before I respond? Is it bad that sometimes when I'm staring out the window and pondering random things, there seems to be a wave of Japanese gibberish chattering in the back of my head? It's not even just the Japanese thing. Usually, I feel pretty secure in my blatant otakuism and weeabooism. I don't really care what people think about my hobbies and don't mind bringing it up in conversations with friends as most of them are also fans of one degree or another. But sometimes it's hard not to wonder if you're becoming that kind of fan. Even the most confident of losers don't really want to be that guy, y'know?

I flew to New Orleans on Friday and was spending the night at my roommate's (parent's) place before we drove back to Savannah on Saturday. Every turn of the conversation seemed like the prime opportunity to talk about some anime I'd seen over break. It was ridiculous. There was some on and off storming when we were heading out to dinner. We saw a rainbow, and I wanted to mention that one episode of Mushishi (ep. 7). Later on, we were talking about classical music or something, and I wanted to recommend Nodame Cantabile. At the mention of dreams becoming reality, I wanted to relay that other episode of Mushishi (ep. 4). Sure, roomie's a fan too, but she has a dial-up connection at home and thus can't watch nearly as much as me (of course, I offered to transfer a few series to her before break, but it never happened :|), and even I would get annoyed after a while if someone talked continuously about anime to me. It always did bug me when some people related everything to anime (especially when it wasn't really related).

Maybe I get paranoid sometimes. I can't seem to find too many fans like myself in real life. People around me are either very casual fans or very annoying fantards. Where's the happy middle? I'd like to think that I'm a happy middle excepting those occasional ventures into fantard land, and it's in those moments that I get self-conscious and feel like a hypocrite. It's probably reasonable to allow for those occasional fantard moments, but it's a fuzzy line to draw. How much fantarding is too much fantarding? When you start dreaming in a language you only understand a few phrases in? When your every reaction to everyday conversation is in relation to some series you saw recently? When the itch to write fanfiction hits again?

It probably doesn't matter. Classes start tomorrow, and there shall be no more series binging for a while probably. Ports are blocked here, so there'll be no torrenting either until we get around to getting a router hooked up. Until then, I'll keep up with my weekly series by having my brother send them to me over AIM or making due with YouTube/Veoh. The only new series I'm picking up for this season is Kurokami, which, as I expected, never got news of an official stream. I wonder if anyone's actually lucky enough to catch it on TV? Going back to this reduced consumption will likely take a lot of the Japanese out of my head, but it might take a bit longer for the impulse to share other series I've seen recently to go away. Sharing is caring, and I care too damn much about these things.

I'm not particularly worried about this blog though. I'll still be keeping up with news and the aniblogosphere and such. I still have that review for Host Club to finish up and random other editorial-type topics in my head. I'll probably do some photoshoots of miscellaneous figures I have too, now that I'm reunited with my collection. I haven't really gotten around to taking many pictures with my shiny Canon Rebel after all. Feraligatr and the Zaku want more action! v_vV

Review: Planetes

2008-12-31T21:44:00.006-05:00

Being Asian, the "real" New Year's has never been as important to me as the Lunar New Year (for 2009, it's on January 26th), but I guess Planetes is a pretty good series to have reviewed for the new year regardless. I was thoroughly impressed with the depiction of space here: it is amazing, and everyone that considers themselves any kind of sci-fi fan should definitely check it out. It's the future, guys!

A lot of people seem to recommend Infinite Ryvius for those who like Planetes, probably because Goro Taniguchi directed both of them and both deal with space, but I'm having a hard time moving on with the former. I'm four episodes in, can't relate to any of the characters, and don't really feel moved towards caring about their well-being. It's kind of frustrating. I think finishing it might depend entirely on how much I want to review it because I hate reviewing series I haven't seen in their entirety; it always feels like I'm missing something that way.

The series I'm breezing through now though is, surprisingly, Ouran High School Host Club, lol. I've avoided the series thus far mostly because the premise didn't interest me. I hear their fanbase is pretty annoying too, but I don't really concern myself with that usually. As it is now, I'll probably be finishing off the series tonight and hope to have a review by the time classes start again on Monday. v_vV I'm flying to New Orleans on Friday though, and carpooling the ten hours from there to Savannah on Saturday, so maybe not. We'll see! I'm sure nobody cares but me! 8D

Review: Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter

2008-12-27T14:42:00.005-05:00

Finished up the season finale on Christmas Day, so here's the review for Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen. It wasn't quite as awesome as the first season, and I'm still a little confused as to why it's only eleven episodes long because it could have easily been longer, but I'm excited for the third season. Why does it have to wait until Fall 2009 though? So far away. ;3;

Oh, well. I'm thinking of checking out that TV drama in the meantime, especially since two live action movies are coming soon too.

It's kind of weird switching off between this and Planetes though, lol. I'm halfway finished with that and will get that review in by New Year's if I'm lucky.

As Long as it Isn't Code Geass R3: Spice and Witch

2008-12-25T20:27:00.004-05:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Code Geass is an epicly popular franchise in hard economic times. Why shouldn't they milk it for all its worth? It's pretty much guaranteed that everyone's going to watch whatever they put out anyway. It doesn't matter whether they loved it or hated it; curiosity trumps everything. They'll watch it. I know I'll watch it. I don't want more; I was very happy with the ending and really want to just leave it as it is, but I'll watch it anyway.

The final illustration drama is already supposed to address more of what happens after the ending, actually, but the new announcement makes it seem like they have something more up their sleeves. So what'll it be? Another season? A summary-type movie/OAV? Side-stories or spin-offs? Prequel? SEED Supernova-style crack shorts?

I will accept all of above except the sequel option. I absolutely do not want a third season. Taniguchi, you bastard, you said this was the end of the story, and I'm going to hold you do it. :| I loved the ambiguity of the ending. I want to believe that Lelouch is dead. I don't want a third season calling it either way, especially since he pretty much has to be alive for a third season because it's his story. A third season wouldn't work without him. I do not want to follow the adventures of C.C. and L.L. through the countryside. Seriously, do not want.

The other options seem more reasonable anyway since they all require less work. A summary-type condensed release seems like the most likely path to me. It would probably work like all the summary movies they did for Gundam SEED/Destiny, which I think did pretty okay (not sure though, and I'm too lazy to go look it up right now). Side-stories illustrating what the rest of the characters did after the series would be okay since they'd probably be short and wouldn't require Lulu's resurrection. A prequel would probably be the most interesting since there are still tons of holes left in the mythology and mystery of Geass, and we never did find out C.C.'s real name. To make up for her having to live forever, we could explore her past! Sounds good to me. I'd definitely be up for some crack shorts too. It wouldn't be hard considering the series was some 50% crack anyway.

It's more wait and see, I guess. I don't know why I keep hoping that Sunrise doesn't pull a Sunrise though. It's like hoping for a Gundam series without giant robots and war.

Grandma Got Run Over by These Pikachu

2008-12-25T00:45:00.005-05:00

They like to hide in trees, and I've trained them to attack fat bearded men that come in the night with gigantic sacks of toys. Pikachus, volt tackle~.

One of my brothers picked up a shitton of bootleg Pikachus from China this summer. ...Yup. There are more pictures here.

I'll be out of town for a few days, but I'm not expecting much of an anime-related haul from the family (er, or anything else, really). I know I have a Leafeon plush and a Lelouch Figma waiting for me back in Savannah though. v_vV

Wait, wait. Raijin-Oh!? Really!?

2008-12-22T22:15:00.009-05:00

I saw "Anime Midstream" come up in the titles of a blog or two on my feed today, but didn't pay much attention until I saw Anime Vice's post about it, and that's only because "Raijin-Oh" caught my eye. No one else mentioned that part. ...Probably because no one else knows what the hell Raijin-Oh is.

Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh is an old 90's kids' super sentai mecha series (you can watch the opening theme here). It's also one of the first anime series I've ever seen way back... in the 90's. I saw it as a hilarious Chinese dub. It was amazing. I have many fond memories of it. And it's apparently been picked up by some new company called Anime Midstream. It's amazing to me that something so old, random, and obscure should be licensed out of the blue, especially by a newbie company, and especially in the middle of this economic crisis. I love Raijin-Oh, haven't seen it in years, and would love to revisit it, but there's a lot about this license that concerns me. Taking a peek at Anime Midstream's website was all it took.

Even before getting to Anime Midstream, Raijin-Oh's age is very obvious. It's not like the shiny stuff kids like to watch on TV these days. As such, I don't think it has a place in the market for today's children; besides, for a new company, the chances of them getting a broadcast deal are slim to none. There's no way a toy deal is going to come out of this either. The designs are simply too old. The only people that would want watch this are old(ish) geeks like me, and even that's limited by the by the number of people that either already know of this title or are curious enough to check it out. The DVD-only market is a tricky business, especially if you don't have a marketing budget to speak of.

And everything about Anime Midstream gives off a bad, bad impression:

1) According to a quick whois query, their domain was registered on December 11th, 2008. That's only four days before their press release of the license. Kind of fishy. I wonder what kind of impression Sunrise got when they entered into negotiations with a nobody company with no website? Since it's such an old title, maybe Sunrise doesn't care, but even so.

2) Their website layout is a free template. A poorly implemented and clashing one at that. The web designer in me is crying.

3) They have a site counter! A crappy, oldschool cgi site counter! God! I haven't seen one of these in forever! They remind me of the Internet in the 90's, right up there with blaring midis, repeating backgrounds with unreadable text over them, and cheap animated gifs! Are they shooting for a site from the time period their license is from??

4) The text under "Who We Are" is terrible. It has crappy grammar and crappy wording in general. I want to attack it with a red pen.

5) The blurb they have about Raijin-Oh under "Series" is copy-pasta'd from Wikipedia. Good job, guys.

6) A call for auditions in voice acting? Does this mean they want to dub Raijin-Oh with an amateur cast? On one hand, it's interesting to see a company reach out further from the talent pool so we don't see the same names appear over and over again in anime, but on the other hand, it basically says they have no budget whatsoever.

7) Donations!? It astounds me that they're asking for donations. Donations is something starving artists ask for, and even starving artists (usually) have the decency to ask for commissions, not hand-outs. It's even worse that they're straight-up telling you that a $5 donation can get your name on a DVD. $5 isn't a lot. Maybe it'll be a tiny, obscure, extra section of the DVD, but even so! $15 for a short message? I also get the feeling they aren't expecting much in the way of donations which is why they're willing to give back for so little. That's just depressing.

8) Their contact address is a gmail address. Come on. Can't you set up the mail server on your two-week old hosting account?

I was really excited about this for about five minutes. After looking at Anime Midstream's website though, I'm pretty damn sure that this is never going to come to pass. There's no way a dub's ever going to get produced, and even if they go for a sub-only DVD release, I can't imagine that a lot of retailers will want to carry something like this, especially if they don't have a clear audience. No one wants series like this right now. The otaku community is getting all excited about near-simultaneously releases, what with the upcoming Kurokami and Naruto Shippudden; they don't want a nearly two-decade old series for kids. It'll be interesting to see what ends up happening, but there shall be no vote of confidence from me.

Review: Gundam Wing: Episode Zero, and Why I Hate Comcast

2008-12-22T16:19:00.005-05:00

Here is my review for Gundam Wing: Episode Zero. I meant to do it earlier when I was reviewing all the rest of my GW manga, but Episode Zero must be special since I still own it and I sold everything else. I really want to go rewatch Gundam Wing now, but all I have is some ghetto VHS tape of the final five or six episodes... and there's no longer a working VCR in the house. I do have Endless Waltz, so I guess I could watch that, but I wanna see the series, man. Then again, maybe I should just go rewatch Gundam SEED (for the fifth or sixth time) instead since I do have access to that, and I'm supposed to be filling in the SEED wiki portions of Anime Vice while this fellow does Wing.

And now it's time for my rant about Comcast even though I'm sure that there isn't a single person that would sing praises for them!

My family swapped from Time Warner to Comcast for phone and Internet services since, apparently, Time Warner stopped service in the area. Why? I dunno. To give Comcast a total monopoly!? This seems to be the case! Comcast is notorious for its shitty customer service, and this is compounded by their shitty service in general! For the last week, our Internet has been up and down and down again. It was mostly just an annoyance at first because it would glitch off for a minute at a time every half hour or so. Then it turned into five minutes. Then I noticed that certain sites I'd try to visit would be arbitrarily blocked. A lot of blogs. Things on my blogroll would be blocked mysteriously with a "401 site blocked by administrator" notice. A Google search for "proxy" wouldn't loud. Then the blocked sites would reappear. It was very puzzling.

Saturday night, the Internet was down for at least eight hours. Sunday evening and into this afternoon, the Internet was down for twenty. I couldn't even leech off the neighbor's wifi because everyone else is on Comcast too (well, that and more and more people seem to have gotten the grasp of security-enabled networks)! It's utterly ridiculous. Oh, the phones were down too, but I don't use the landlines, so that didn't bother me. Calls to Comcast directed us to crappy customer service agents reading off manuals that didn't have any better advice than "reboot your machine." When pressured for better measures, their responses were "we can't help you if you don't follow our instructions." Excellent.

In the last day, I've played 38 games of Freecell and won 23 of them (60% yay!). I'm not even going to tell you how many games of Solitare I played (and lost). It's funny how the Internet is often considered a distraction, but I honestly can't get any work done unless it's there. My routine is to work for a few and surf for a few. Ten minutes of work for five minutes of surfing. Sure, sometimes I get into something and end up online longer than intended, but unless it falls into repetitive checking of email, I don't really consider my online activities to be completely useless. I'm sure it wasn't always like this, but I'm too ADD now to concentrate on anything for prolonged periods of time without Internet breaks. Dependency? I guess, but it usually isn't bad. I get stuff done. Honest.

It's just those days when the Internet isn't there. Curse you, Comcast. Curse you and your monopolizing ways.

Review: Gundam SEED C.E. 73: Stargazer

2008-12-20T12:40:00.003-05:00

Finally saw this OAV the other day, so here is the review. I'm still kind of surprised at how good it was. It's good enough that I'm actually considering checking out the Astray spin-off stuff, which I'd avoided before mostly because the Astray girl characters were annoying as hell, but I guess they wouldn't really be using those characters anyway (right? right?).

What I really want though is either for someone to license and release the Gundam SEED Destiny: The Edge manga series or for someone to freakin' finish scanlating it. I usually just say that I deny Destiny's existence and don't treat its events as canon, but I guess I'm still desperate to find something that takes that shitty storyline and makes it (somewhat kind of maybe) tolerable. From what I've read of The Edge, it seems like it has that potential. Of course, part of that is natural just because The Edge's retelling focuses entirely on Athrun's POV instead of jumping onto Shinn's sorry sobstory. Athrun being my favorite character from the series probably helps too. :\ Still, if the Astray side stories can get translated, then why not The Edge? (Probably because everyone finally realized that no one likes SEED in the States and doesn't care, probably.)

Reeves Confirmed as Spike?

2008-12-19T22:46:00.006-05:00

Being on TOKYOPOP's mailing list sure brings interesting news sometimes. According to this most recent email, it seems like Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegal is a sure thing:

Spike and friends are blasting off on a new adventure as plans for a live action film adaptation of TOKYOPOP's Cowboy Bebop have just been announced! Keanu Reeves (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Matrix trilogy) will star as Spike Spiegel with Erwin Stoff (I Am Legend) to produce.

Of course, TP can't be considered a reliable source as they have nothing to do with the film at all. (I love how they claim Cowboy Bebop as their property.) They're just using the tidbit to promote the Cowboy Bebop manga they have. The article they link doesn't explicitly cast Reeves as Spike either (or at least, it cites an interview that's already been torn apart by the aniblogosphere and the general consensus seems to be that he really wants the role, but it isn't a sure thing yet).

I think they're just jumping the gun on that announcement, but I don't think I really care at this point.

I said in July that I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt on his potential as Spike. At the very least, I'm comforted by the fact that Reeves is a genuine fan, which should seriously help him adjust to the role should he get it. I don't know enough actors to be able to suggest a better suitor anyway. But since the rumors of July seem to be holding pretty well for the most part now, I'm wondering if the bit about Bebop's production being accelerated for a 2010 release is going to end up being true also. If that's the case, I really want to know who'll be signing on for the rest of the cast, as well as who'll be directing it.

I think Jet would be easy enough to cast for. He's the most archetypal of the lot. Ed and Faye I'm worried about. I can't decide who I'm worried about more.... probably Ed since she needs to be very androgynous and very quirky to work right. I'm also wondering if they'll be able to secure a trained Corgi for Ein? Or would a different breed be easier? I don't expect them to cover everyone's origin stories, and Ein would be pretty easy to cut out completely if it came down to it. (So would Ed, for that matter.) Hmm. Honestly, there's a lot that can be sacrificed with Bebop since the series is so episodic. If they want to incorporate the ending, then it's more Spike's story than anything else. I guess we'll see. I'm cautiously excited about this.

First Look at the Art of the DOGS OAV

2008-12-19T16:20:00.009-05:00

So it seems that Jump's launched a web site/portal/promo page for the DOGS anime (I can't tell exactly what it is since I, uh, can't read it), and it includes our first look at the promotional art for the OAV, which could be indicative of the style they end up with in the actual animation. My first thought is the realization that there are going to be a lot of sacrifices. Miwa Shirow's style is very detailed, super clean, but occasionally chaotic. He also uses a ton of spot blacks, which is something I think almost always loses its charm when color is added (just take a look at Watchmen; hunt down the inked pages and compare them to the colored ones).

My second thought is that those character designs look pretty generic all of a sudden. From left to right: Badou looks a bit more feminine and flamboyant than I'm used to... I think it's his face? I don't know, but I miss the camo pattern on his coat. Haine actually doesn't look that bad. His proportions are full of lulz, and I really don't know what's going on with that left arm of his, but honestly, Shirow has some funky proportions sometimes too. Naoto is pretty unimpressive, but I don't think that angle's helping. Her face looks kind of off, and I can't see the detail that needs to be on the hilt of her katana. Mihai probably looks the best here. His face is spot on, and the rest of him looks passable.

Really though, it isn't that bad. The characters are far from being bastardized, and the background looks pretty good too. In any case, it's just promotional art. How the animation ends up remains to be seen, and that's the important part, right? This might be the first time a manga is adapted into an anime as I'm reading it, so I can't say how purist I'll end up being, but as far as first impressions go, I'm reasonably pleased. At least I don't have to worry about the voice cast.

(Hattip: DOGS LJ Community)

TOKYOPOP's Got a Live Action Deal

2008-12-17T23:01:00.009-05:00

Live action adaptations of anime have been getting a lot of coverage lately. Since that official trailer came out, I've given up on Dragonball, or I should say Dragonball Evolution. Piccolo being green is its only redeeming point, but considering that's how it should have been all along, it's not really redemption after all. I was a skeptic all along, but originally, I'd been planning on humoring it and going to see it in theatres anyway because hey, it's Dragonball. I'll go to make fun of it, but I still would have gone. Not so much anymore. Considering our flailing economy, a few laughs that will undoubtedly turn into uncontrollable tears isn't worth the ticket price.

That live action Cowboy Bebop movie got a lot of headlines today because it looks like Keanu Reeves really wants that role as Spike Speigal after all. I'm still skeptical about it, but after all the disastrous news for Dragonball, but was a little cheered knowing that Reeves is a fan and hopes to preserve the original integrity of the anime.

Now, TOKYOPOP just sent me an email exclaiming that it's got a deal for a live action adaptation of Priest, one of its manhwa properties. Apparently, it's something that's been floating around for a while, but now it's got a shiny new director I've never heard of so there's new life to it. I'm not familiar with Priest, but it's Western horror and vampires. Not really something I'm particularly interested in, so I can't decide if it's better suited for Hollywood than, say Dragonaball. If Twilight's any indication, I guess vampires have a place. Western horror? I dunno. Crappy remakes of Japanese thrillers seem to be big, so even though this is Korean, maybe that appeal will still be there.

I never liked the idea of TOKYOPOP restructuring and making that New Media division. I still think it's pretty stupid and pointless of them to try and expand into new areas when their core market is suffering so much. I suppose licensing out a property doesn't really require much effort on their part, but I'd like to think that they have some hand in production to keep the property from deviating too much and going to hell. So I'm not sure how much I actually want TP to succeed in this endeavor because I just want them to go back to focusing on their manga. They don't need a New Media division if they keep laying people off. I really can't see this movie being a huge box office success though, even if it stays pretty low budget and B-list like it feels like it will.

It's probably too early to be speculating, anyway. I wouldn't be surprising if this title continues to flounder around the next few years, if it gets finished at all.